The meditation woman no longer spoke. Had the session ended?
She opened her eyes—and started violently at the sight of the black box floating before her eyes not six inches from her face. She flinched back sharply, swatting it to the bed as if it were some oversized insect. It tumbled across the folds of coverlet and came to a stop. She sat there breathing hard, blinking rapidly, and deeply alarmed. Not again!
After a moment reality reasserted itself, and she realized she hadn’t been hallucinating, but dreaming. The clock on the desk read 12:55. They’d begun their ten-minute session at 12:25, so obviously she had twenty minutes to account for.
Nor was she the only one to have fallen asleep. Jade had collapsed back on her pillows and lay unmoving except for the rise and fall of her chest, her eyes closed, her mouth open. Lacey smiled at her roommate, wondering which of them had fallen asleep first.
She stood and set the box on her desk beside her cell phone, was about to turn back to the bed when she remembered the messages she’ d left with her family physician and her mother. Though she hardly cared anymore, and assured herself those messages could wait until tomorrow, something prodded her to check. A latent hope that she really hadn’t had a breakdown and they would actually exonerate her?
Whatever her reason, she picked up the phone and checked her voice mail. To her surprise there were three messages. The first was from Ma, who didn’t remember any specific photos of the scar, nor even the scar itself, and wanted to know what difference it made, anyway.
The second was from her physician, who, not surprisingly, recalled no incidents involving lacerations, nor did he have any records of treatment elsewhere.
“But the urgent care centers don’t always get the information to primary care, especially if the patient neglects to request it,” he said. So. Nothing there, either. But then, she hadn’t expected anything, and was okay with that. A tumble into paranoid hysterics in the middle of the night didn’t seem so awful anymore.
The third call was from Gen Viascola, who’d tried to get Lacey on her pager but failed, so she was calling to let her know that the young man from ASU was not going to be coming down from Phoenix tonight, after all, due to lack of transportation.
“He should be here by Tuesday or Wednesday,” Viascola said. “So you’ll have to do the job for a few more days. Hopefully you’ll get this message tonight, but if not, or even if you would prefer to wait until daylight, I’m sure everything can wait until morning. Sorry to spring this on you. Just give me a ping to let me know you got the message.”
With a groan she dialed Viascola’s number and left a voice mail, then flipped the phone shut and turned it off. Most times waiting until morning would have been fine. But as she’ d told Jade earlier, tomorrow she needed to get right on the autoclaving. And she couldn’t put the animal care off until tomorrow afternoon because she had a litter of newly weaned rats. If they didn’t have enough food, they would start eating each other. She could, however, go down and make sure they had food and water to last the night.
With a groan, she stood, pulled her shorts and T-shirt from the clothes hamper and donned them, slipped on her flip-flops, and went up to the animal facility.
As she stepped out of the elevator into the dimly lit hall of the animal quarters, a chill of unease brought her to a halt. The elevator door rumbled shut behind her, and silence wrapped her like a shroud. A faint trickle of water drifted through the stillness. Only a couple of the fluorescent ceiling panels were lit, casting triangles of light and shadow across the walls. Ahead on the right, the ready room stood dark, door closed. What if the strange youth had returned and was waiting for her . . . ?
Her heartbeat accelerated and her mouth went dry as memory of last night’s events returned with full and vivid force. It was only with great effort of will that she did not turn and slap wildly at the button to call the elevator back.
He’s not here, she told herself firmly, drawing a deep breath and forcing the panic down. He was never here. You imagined it, remember?Remember Poe’s lab? My lab coat? My shirt? Reinhardt’s denial? It didn’t happen. There’s nothing to worry about.
She drew another breath and started forward, her rubber thongs flip-flopping loudly in the quiet.
She went to the ready room, snapped on the light, and frowned at the sight of one of the sink counter drawers open. It held pens, pencils, and broad-tipped black markers. One of the latter had been thrown back in uncapped. Its tip was mashed and drying out, so she cast it into the trash, wondering why whoever had used it hadn’t done that in the first place.
With a sigh she retrieved her lab coat from the back of the door and put it on. By now fully awake, she decided to do all her chores and save herself the trouble tomorrow.
She tickled Harvey under the chin, then put him on her shoulder and dumped the wood chips from the bottom tray, replaced food and water, and moved on to the mice. Finally she put Harvey back into his home and went across the hall to the rat rooms, emptying the waste trays, refilling bottles and food bins, spraying down the floor to wash any stray droppings into the drain. There were five rooms and it took her forty-five minutes to finish them, all without incident.
Finally it was time to do the frogs, a task she normally did first but this time had unconsciously saved for last. She got a bucket from the ready room into which she would put the dead frogs—there were always a few to be picked from the tank—and headed with growing reluctance toward the corridor nearest the elevator.
She rounded the corner and stopped as suddenly as if she’ d run into an invisible wall, her breath hissing against her teeth. The corridor was dark, but the frog room’s light was on and its door stood open— inward, toward the room, exactly as it had been last night.
Tonight there were no frogs in the hall, though. Apparently Dr.Reinhardt had just been in and out, probably while she was in the rat rooms, and the frogs had not had time to escape. She could see a few on the floor, however, visible through the crack between door and jamb. At least she’ d arrived in time to stop them from hopping all over the place. If only she could move.
Her pulse had once more careened into the hundred-twenty-plus range, her hands cold and shaking. She forced herself to move, but it was like walking neck-deep through a pool of water. Almost as if she knew what she would find there.
Except there was no way in the world she could have anticipated the sight that met her eyes.
Chapter Thirteen
The steel tank lay on its side, frogs spilled across the painted floor, dead or dying, most of them legless. Bodies and legs floated separately on the water that had collected above the clogged drain. Here was the origin of the trickling sound she’ d heard earlier.
She stared at the carnage in disbelief, more bewildered than afraid, and stepped into the room without thinking. Even standing in its midst, she couldn’t believe it. No one person could turn that tank over with just the strength of his own arms. Especially not when it was full of water.
Yet there it lay, hinged lids gaping slightly open from the pull of gravity.
And the frogs. Dead. Mutilated. It was too bizarre and inexplicable to be real. Oh, Lord! I must be hallucinating again.
But . . . were hallucinations this vivid? The water cold on her toes where it reached over the thick soles of her flip-flops, the plastic bucket hard and cool against her bare leg, the dank stench of frog, the sucking sound of the water trickling through the clogged drain . . .
For the first time she lifted her eyes from frogs and tank and saw the words scrawled across the peach-colored side wall in fat black marker:
HIS EYES ARE OVER ALL HIS CREATION
She frowned, closed her eyes tight, opened them again. The tank, the frogs, the words were still there. And the words made no more sense than the rest of it.
She closed her eyes again, clenched the bucket hard, seeking to feel some sign that she wasn’t really in the frog room but back in her bed dreaming. She took several deep, calming br
eaths, assuring herself of this, and trying to make herself wake up.
But the sick, surreal scene remained when she opened her eyes.
Oh, Lord, what is wrong with me? Why do I keep doing this? Surely I’m not that stressed! I thought things were getting better. . . .
“Do you like it?” The voice spoke low and raspy almost in her ear, catapulting her forward and around with a shriek. One foot landed on frog bodies and slid out from under her. Flailing for balance, she tumbled backward, landing with a splash on her bottom.
He stood in the open doorway, grinning at her, taller than she remembered him. There was the chipped tooth. The dirty blond hair with its short, bristled Mohawk, the heavy brow, the ice-chip eyes, the big boil on his forehead, larger than it was last night. He’ d smeared mud across his grizzled cheeks—streaks of tan and reddish brown— which only added to the wild look.
“I did it for you,” he said, stepping into the room.
She scrambled away from him in a backward crawl, hampered by the oversized, unbuttoned lab coat until her own movements pulled it down off her shoulders. Freed of it, she surged backward, only to hit the wall. He stopped a few feet inside the room, the hard blue eyes traveling downward from her face, over her wet T-shirt and skimpy shorts, her protective lab coat now a wet, rumpled mess beneath her. The muscles alongside his right eye twitched. His mouth opened slightly and the tip of his tongue darted out, running lightly across his lips. “I was afraid you weren’t going to come.”
A squall of revulsion sent her scrambling sideways and over the fallen tank, putting it between them. Using it to maintain her balance, she finally got her feet under her. Only to realize she was trapped. And if he had the strength to pull over that tank, what could she do to resist him?
“Oh, Lord, let me wake up! Let me wake up. Let me wake up.”
“Wake up?” he asked, startling her. She hadn’t realized she’ d spoken the words aloud. “Yes. Let us wake up together.”
He stepped back, his eyes never leaving her own, the tic in the right one working rapidly.
Oh, Lord, please . . . please . . .
He was reaching back to shut the frog-room door when the elevator pinged and both of them froze. The doors trundled open. Footfalls echoed in the silence.
Again, Lacey was first to react, screaming for help at the top of her lungs and leaping over the tank for the discarded bucket. As she grabbed it and flung it upward, her feet slid out from under her and she went down again. But not before glimpsing him dodging the bucket, his face full of undiluted fury.
But incredibly the stranger ran. She heard one of the heavy lab room doors slam, a rapid thumping of feet, and suddenly Dr. Reinhardt stood in his place.
“He was here!” she cried. “Just now. I think he ran out through Poe’s lab again.”
Reinhardt vanished, ignoring her cries to wait. She got carefully to her feet and finally had the presence of mind to kick off the treacherous flip-flops and put them into the bucket.
From the hall Reinhardt’s voice echoed back to her: “You sure it was Poe’s lab? ’Cause the door’s locked.”
“No. Not sure.” She heard the beep and click of a security lock disengaging and reached the hall in time to see Reinhardt disappear through the doorway of his own lab at the hall’s end. A warning rose to her lips and died there as the light flicked on and nothing happened. He’ d left the door ajar, and she glimpsed him through the crack as he moved around the room beyond. A desperate disappointment flooded her as she realized the stranger had gotten away. Again.
She sagged weakly against the wall, shaking like an old woman, as much from reaction to the adrenaline recently surging through her veins as from cold. With her shorts and T-shirt drenched from all the falling and splashing, and her lab coat lying in the puddle of dead frogs and water, she had nothing to ward off the chill of the very well-conditioned air. Gooseflesh puckered her arms and legs, and her teeth were chattering.
Reinhardt emerged from his lab and pulled the door shut behind him, then stopped when he saw her standing there.
She pushed away from the wall, dreading what he would say next. “You didn’t see him, did you.”
He stood motionless for a moment, then gave a start and strode toward her, slipping off his lab coat as he came. “Here, you’re all wet,” he said. “No wonder you’re shivering.” He wrapped his too-large coat around her as if she were a child. She pulled its front edges together before her as her throat closed and tears blurred her vision. For a moment she wished he’ d wrap his arms around her, too, for right then she wanted nothing so much as to cling to someone safe and let the storm of fear and heartache and frustration pour out.
But he touched her only enough to get the coat around her shoulders, then abandoned her to step into the vandalized frog room.
“I didn’t imagine this,” she called after him. “He was real! He was here!” She heard the rising pitch in her voice and cut herself off, knowing her words were more for herself than for him. She drew a deep breath, then stepped into the doorway. He was staring at the words on the wall.
“You see them, don’t you?”
“I see them.”
“And the frogs? The overturned tank?”
His head turned toward the tank and he nodded. She couldn’t see his face.
“I’ll admit I could have written those words on the wall,” she said. “I didn’t, but I could’ve. I could not have tipped over that tank, however.”
“No. You couldn’t have.” He sounded almost dazed. Once more his gaze tracked over the various elements of vandalism in the small room, then he turned abruptly and met her at the door. “Nor do I believe you tore the legs off all those frogs. Come on. This place isn’t safe.”
Taking her arm, he steered her out of the doorway and down the hall toward the elevator. “For all we know, your friend is hiding out in Poe’s lab, and I don’t like it that security’s not down here yet. That tank had to make quite a boom when it fell, so even if the surveillance cameras didn’t— Well, no matter. You’ll be safer elsewhere.”
They stopped in front of the elevator, and he punched the single Up button. The doors opened immediately. But as he started to guide her into the car, she pulled free of him and stepped back, forcing him to turn and face her.
“If security’s not down here yet, shouldn’t we call them?” she demanded. “I mean, if their systems are down, and he is in Poe’s lab, they might still catch him.”
“We’ll go straight up to security, if you like,” he said. “But right now we need to get out of here. We have no idea where that nut case has gone, and someone who can do the things he has done is not to be trifled with.”
With that he convinced her. She stepped into the elevator and he followed closely, slapping the One button for the security station as he entered. The elevator’s doors rumbled closed and the car lurched upward, stopping moments later, one floor up.
But when the doors slid open onto the security center, Lacey stood motionless, staring past an empty waiting area to the receiving desk, where a young female officer sat reading a paperback book. Behind her stretched a roomful of desks and computer screens, most of them unmanned. From all appearances, it was a quiet, uneventful night.
Reinhardt had said there were surveillance cameras in the AnFac. Surely if they were down, someone would have noticed. And he was right about the boom of the tank falling. Even if they couldn’t see it, even if audio transmitters were out, only one floor up they’d have heard it with their ears and felt it in the trembling of the floor. Shouldn’t someone have come to investigate? Especially if their surveillance feeds were down?
How could they not know what happened! Last night they were all over it!
For the first time in hours she returned to her thoughts of a cover-up. In that vein, she could all too easily imagine how things would go should she approach the desk. How she’ d tell the pretty blond officer that she’ d seen the same intruder tonight as she’ d hallucinated last
night during her fit of hysterics.
This time there was the tank and the frogs, of course. But last time there’d been her wound and the destruction of Poe’s lab. . . . Maybe they’d just been waiting for her and Reinhardt to leave and were even now down there cleaning everything up. . . .
If she told the girl her story, they’d no doubt hustle her down to the clinic again, claiming there was nothing on their surveillance cameras. Maybe they’d even blame her for the tank and the frogs. Hysteria sometimes gave people extraordinary strength—and given her record, who would be surprised if she were to jerk the legs off all the frogs?
By the time the desk officer looked up, Lacey had talked herself out of making any sort of report and, avoiding eye contact, reached to push the Two button, which would take them up to the main floor lobby.
“I thought you were living in the tech dorm on floor B1,” Reinhardt said as the doors closed.
“I am,” she said quietly. “But I can’t go back there right now.” Thinking about being trapped in that tiny underground, windowless room sent a wave of claustrophobic-tinged terror rattling through her. She realized now that it was a good thing she’ d been sedated at the clinic last night, because she’ d never have been able to sleep otherwise. As would certainly be the case tonight. . . . Unless she took a couple of those sleeping pills the clinic psychiatrist had given her. Or maybe I’ll just doze on a bench somewhere until dawn. Or head up to Prep and Supply to get a head start on the autoclaving.
The south service elevator opened directly into the Madrona Lounge, which was located on the main floor, tucked away behind the great atrium and welcoming lobby. Intended for faculty, it was generally off-limits to the public.
She crossed the small elevator lobby and entered the lounge which, at two in the morning, was dark and deserted. Smallish round tables attended by plastic molded chairs filled the carpeted room, a few illumined by overhead security lights, most of them shrouded in shadow. Potted ficus and metal cactus sculptures stood at intervals around the space, which was bounded on the south by a wall of windows. Outside, more tables crowded a small balcony, beyond which a decorative balustrade held back the night, where only a few tiny grounds lights flickered in the darkness.