Bloodline: A Sigma Force Novel (49 page)

Painter had his communications nest monitoring events, making sure the deception remained in place, massaging the press where needed. But such a level of fraud could not last forever without risking exposure. In less than six hours, it would have to end.

Knowing time was ticking down, Painter returned to the hospital ward. Two Secret Service agents protected the hall; another manned a post by the elevator. The fourth stood guard inside the small ward.

Painter found Gant sitting on the edge of Amanda’s bed, holding her hand. He had stripped out of the janitorial coveralls and wore wrinkled navy-blue slacks and a borrowed gray shirt. Amanda still balanced between moments of lucidity and sedation, monitored by her neurologist, who remained concerned about the subdural hematoma.

At the moment, she slept.

Gant looked up as he entered. “She spoke a few words when I came in. She’s still worried about her baby.”

“We all are.”

He nodded. “What’s the word from your field team? Did they find your man?”

Painter hated to dash the gleam of hope in a father’s eyes, but he’d had enough deception for one day. “Already gone. But I’m hoping he left some clue behind. We should know in a few minutes.”

Gant sighed, turning to his daughter. He spoke slowly, full of regret. “I pulled her into the limelight and made her childhood a spectacle, a target for the press. And I still had no time for
her
. No wonder she rebelled, lashed out. No wonder she fled without saying a word. What trust have I earned in her life?” He glanced up, wiping a tear, but never let go of her hand. “I promised her I’d find William. Don’t make me let her down again.”

Painter stepped over and placed a hand on his shoulder, silently making an oath to do everything he could to help.

“What they did to her, to my family …” Gant said. “If I ever find out who orchestrated this, who tortured my baby girl, I will make them regret it for the rest of their days. There will be no quick death. I will make them suffer like no other. I’ll turn their world into a personal hell on earth.”

Painter knew that if anyone had the power to do that, it was President James Gant.

A commotion drew both their attentions around.

Jason came flying into the room, winded. “Director.” The young man never stopped moving, continuing past the end of the bed and toward the neighboring medical office. “Linus just got a hit.”

Painter got drawn into the wake of his excitement. It took him an extra moment to remember that Linus was Jason’s partner in that vehicle-identification program. Hope flared inside him.

Had they found something?

He rushed after Jason into the medical office. The kid was already at the computer, typing fast.

“What is it?” Painter asked.

The president stood in the doorway, too, listening in.

“I’ll show you,” Jason said, typing as he spoke. “That’s why I came running down here. Linus had been checking all the major thoroughfares leaving Charleston, searching for any further hits on that Ford. The problem is that the farther you get out from the city, the more variables come into play, so many different roads that could be taken, spreading wider and wider like the branches on a tree.”

“What did you find?” Painter pressed.

“This.” Jason pointed at the screen. A clear photo of the front of a Ford explorer appeared. “Picked this up from a security camera at a drawbridge outside of Orangeburg, South Carolina.”

Through the windshield, Painter spotted Lisa behind the wheel. His breathing grew heavier, both relieved and terrified. A man sat next to her, his arms awkwardly raised behind him, like he was stretching. Or maybe his hands were bound behind him.

“You found her,” Painter mumbled. “How long ago was this taken?”

Jason looked both apologetic and worried. “Two days ago … the same day Dr. Cummings was kidnapped in Charleston.”

The president spoke at the doorway. “Who is Dr. Cummings?”

She’s everything to me
.

Aloud, Painter replied, “She was one of the operatives sent to investigate the North Charleston Fertility Clinic.”

Gant’s face grew grim, likely remembering the footage he’d been shown, of women floating in gel-filled tanks.

Jason drew their attention back to the original still shot and pointed. “This was what got me so excited.”

Painter leaned closer. “A license plate.”

“Clear as day. I have Linus running a trace on the car’s GPS, to find out where it might be. We should—”

A dialog box popped onto the screen.

“I think this is it.” Jason tapped on the hyperlink in the box.

The image of the Ford vanished, replaced by a map view. A blinking blue circle narrowed and zoomed, shrinking down toward the border, where a corner of South Carolina pushed between Georgia and North Carolina. The circle finally changed into a small triangle, positioned deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The president was drawn by the activity.

“Can you zoom in and get a street address?” Painter asked Jason.

It was Gant that answered. “No need. I know where that is. That’s within my family’s estate. Fleury-la-Montagne.”

Before Painter could react, his cell phone vibrated. He answered it and was patched through to the unit commander in Arlington.

“Director, we found something here.”

Painter’s heart—already beating hard—sped faster. “What?”

“I took a photo. I’ve already dispatched it to you.”

Painter ordered Jason to retrieve it.

The commander explained while they waited. “We found it scrawled on the floor near the entrance hatch. Mostly invisible to the naked eye, but it glowed under an ultraviolet scan of the chamber. I think it was written with a smear of C-4.”

“Plastic explosive?”

“Yes, sir. I scraped up a tiny dab with a toothpick. From the feel, from the chemical taste, I believe so.”

Jason interrupted. “I’ve got the photo.”

It appeared in the top corner of the monitor.

Three letters glowed with a soft phosphorescence against the dark concrete.

“RLG,” Painter mumbled aloud. “What does that mean?”

Again it was the president who answered, his voice pale with shock. “Those are my brother’s initials. Robert Lee Gant.”

Painter twisted to face him. They both knew some of Gant’s family members had to be involved with this mess, but neither of them suspected anyone
this
close to the First Family.

Gant stared over at his daughter, likely thinking the same—only for him, this dagger dug much deeper and straight into his heart.

“We can’t be sure about your brother,” Painter offered.

“I can,” Gant said faintly.

“How?”

Gant pointed to the lower part of the computer screen. It still displayed the GPS map. “Bobby was headed to the family estate for the holiday, to avoid the Fourth of July crowds in DC. He left two days ago to do some hunting.”

“To Fleury-la-Montagne?”

Gant looked drawn and pale, his voice grim. “No one really uses that French name any longer. Everyone just calls it the Lodge.”

“His color is good,” Lisa pronounced.

She stood before the neonatal incubator. Her gloved hands gently rolled the newborn onto his side, and she listened to the back of his thin chest with her stethoscope. His heartbeat was as rapid as a bird’s, but strong, his pulse-ox readings normal.

She let him roll back on his own. Huge blue eyes, framed by a hint of eyelashes, ogled up at her, his lips pursed hungrily.

Edward Blake stood at her shoulder, watching her examination.

Petra was off in another lab, running the latest DNA analyses, using samples of the boy’s blood and skin, along with cells gathered from a mucosal swab.

“We should get another bottle.” Lisa snapped off her gloves. “He’s been suckling well on his own since we took out his NG tube and PICC line. Let’s keep him moving in that right direction. But all in all, he’s rallying beautifully.”

“That’s all because of you, Dr. Cummings,” Edward said.

It wasn’t false praise. Yesterday, she had found the child circling the drain. She had spent a full hour studying his labs, his radiographs, even his genetic analyses. She had stared with amazement at the triple helix formations on an electron micrograph: two natural DNA strands wrapped around an engineered foreign protein, PNA.

Peptide nucleic acid.

That little microscopic strand of PNA was the source of so much misery, horror, and abuse.

And it wasn’t doing the boy any good, either.

Edward had explained about the unraveling going on in the boy’s body, how these triple-helix compounds were breaking down. But the question still in the air was
why
. Did the boy get sick and that started to unravel the helices? Or did the unraveling make the boy sick?

The only way to know for sure was to stabilize the child and see if the unraveling stopped on its own.

Lisa had come up with a suggestion, after noting the slight spike in eosinophil levels in the boy’s lab work. Eosinophils were the white blood cells that modulated allergic inflammatory processes. They also reacted to parasitic infections, but stool tests had already ruled out that possibility.

The more likely source for this allergic response was the PNA strands. Peptide nucleic acid was a protein like any other, capable of being an allergen as surely as dust or dander. With the breakdown of the triple helices, the freed PNA was being washed out into the cytoplasm, then shed free of the cells.

Petra had shown her a picture of a worm-like PNA molecule squiggling out of an intestinal cell. This rush of engineered protein into the bloodstream and interstitial tissues triggered the mobilization of eosinophils, the body’s defense against such foreign invaders. This allergic anaphylaxis tipped the child into shock.

Recognizing this threat, Lisa had recommended a low-dose therapy of antihistamines and intravenous steroids to knock down that allergic response, to give the child’s body a chance to flush out the foreign allergen and stabilize again.

It worked out beautifully. She had kept a vigil beside the neonatal incubator all night, assisted by Edward as needed, and, hour by hour, the child improved. They were able to slowly unhook him from fluids, oxygen supplementation, and even the feeding tube.

Only one question remained: did it do any good?

Did the boy’s rallying health succeed in returning stability to the triple helices? She knew that was Edward’s hope. They both awaited Petra’s answer.

As Lisa fed the child with a bottle, Edward retired to a computer workstation in a neighboring cubicle. Both were lost to their own worries. Concern for the child’s well-being had staved off her terror for the past day, gave her something to focus on. She knew Kat was somewhere in this lab complex, but where was her friend holed up? For that matter, where was this lab?

So far, both Petra and Edward had treated her with a modicum of respect, appreciating and needing her help. She remembered those digitized words, a cold warning:
Prove your usefulness, and you both continue to live
.

With the child doing better, Lisa’s usefulness was about to come to an end.

Then what?

She remembered who had assigned her to this job in the first place, picturing his kind face, his soft words.

Thank you, Dr. Cummings, for agreeing to help my grandnephew
.

Anger raged inside her against that cool, calm demeanor of Robert Gant. She knew how much pain and suffering and loss it cost to bring this special child into existence, to this place and time. Still, she could not blame the child for such atrocities. The boy might have been born out of blood and heartbreak—but he was still an innocent.

The child finished suckling, the bottle was empty. Those big eyes drooped, heavy with milk-sodden drowsiness. Lisa let him drift into slumber, oblivious to the horrors beyond the clear plastic walls of his incubator.

She turned to Edward and limped over to him, favoring her aching ankle. Up on the wall, a camera tracked her path, swiveling to follow her. She wondered if Robert Gant watched her or merely some bored guard.