Authors: Duane Swierczynski,Anthony E. Zuiker

Dark Revelations (42 page)

BOOK: Dark Revelations

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Natasha had been standing outside Labyrinth’s heavily guarded hospital room when her tablet computer
ping
ed.

The noise jolted her back to reality. Her new reality. For the past half hour she’d been running her life through her head and realized that she’d put every ounce of herself into the team with little left over. She’d been so angry with Dark at first because he seemed to ridicule the very thing she held dear. Now she understood his detachment. Because when the things you hold dear are taken away, it leaves you with a void that aches like crazy.

But the
ping
meant that a new video tagged with “Labyrinth” had been uploaded to the Net.

Natasha checked her screen, clicked through, and saw there was a new video. Apparently uploaded just a few seconds ago by . . .

. . . by the comatose man in the heavily guarded room behind her?

[To enter the Labyrinth, please go to
level26.com
and enter the code: confession]

chapter 86

N
atasha watched the video as the monster delivered his message.

Eyebrows lowered, eyes focused directly at the camera. Like so many of history’s greatest monsters, he looks ordinary. Like the businessman who might sit next to you on a plane. The person you stop to ask for directions in a strange city. The kind-faced average guy in a bar who buys you a drink, and you think nothing of it, because we are trained from birth to trust those who appear ordinary, and fear those who are unusual or freakish.

“My name is Julian Blair, and I want to help you escape the maze.”

At that moment, all became clear to Natasha.

Blair.

B-L-A-I-R

Hidden in the surname itself:

L-A-B -y-R-I-n-t-h

A family joke.

The final riddle.

Natasha shuddered at the realization. All this time, Damien was chasing the monster, and the monster
was his own brother.
A coin toss had decided his fate. One brother on the side of law and order, the other lost to the darkness. Why hadn’t Damien told them any of this? Why was he so afraid to admit the truth? This could have helped them immeasurably in their hunt for Labyrinth. The knowledge would have changed everything.

Then she realized—it could still change everything.

Natasha plucked the phone from her hip and dialed.

Pennsylvania General did not have a forensics lab, of course. But they were perfectly equipped to analyze blood samples. A DNA match could take hours, if they were lucky. But Labyrinth was never that straightforward with his clues. There would be some other message in the blood.

First thing—Dark ordered a tox screen, telling the techs to take every precaution possible. Then Dark hunkered down in front of the microscope with his own sample. Maybe Labyrinth had mixed something else in the blood. Or maybe the real message was etched in the glass tube that held the blood, and the sample itself was meaningless. Something to distract them from the real menace.

See you in a while....

As he sat at the lab table, Dark felt the seconds ticking away in his head. He hated these ticking clock games. He was a brooder. He was his best when he could sit in a cold, quiet room with the lights down and let the pieces of the case float around in his brain until they settled into place.

A lab tech tapped him on the shoulder. “Mr. Dark? You need to see this.”

There was something wrong with the blood in the tube, it turned out. It was slightly irradiated. Which meant the “donor,” dead or alive, had been exposed to radioactive material. Was this a reference to horrible nuclear accidents in Japan? Did Labyrinth have some kind of ecological message to deliver?

No. That felt wrong.

Think, fucking
think
.

The key was finding the donor. The identity would complete the story. But DNA matches took hours, sometimes up to half a day. There wasn’t enough time left....

And then Dark’s phone buzzed—

Natasha.

“There’s a new video,” she said, “and Labyrinth just revealed his birth name. It’s Julian Blair.”

“Brothers . . . ,” Dark said quietly, the pieces silently clicking into place. He couldn’t help but think of their brief, strange conversation in Edinburgh. Labyrinth had been dropping hints even then.
Brothers under the skin. You and I, Steve Dark.

“No proof of that, but they’re about the same age. It makes sense, though. All of it. But I still don’t know why Damien didn’t tell us.”

I know exactly why,
Dark thought. Because if you’ve got a monster for a brother, the last thing you want to do is let the world know about it. The moment they know the same blood runs through your veins, your life will never be the same.

Alain Pantin watched the Labyrinth video from a green room at BBC World News. They’d flown him in to discuss the latest developments in America, and he knew in his gut that it would only be a matter of time before someone linked him to Trey Halbthin.

Trey Halbthin, the madman killer known as Labyrinth.

Part of him despaired that this was it, the end of his political career, the sole focus of his every waking hour for the past three years.

Created by, and ultimately done in by, a monster.

“. . . the world’s worst nightmare come to life . . .”

Pantin knew that he should be filled with dread, but much to his surprise realized that he wasn’t. Not really.

For while Trey Halbthin may have been a monster—

“. . . you still have the power to rise up. You can still take control . . .”

—he was absolutely
right
about his message. And it was a message that Pantin still very much believed in, despite the way in which it was delivered.

A voice spoke from the doorway behind him.

“Mr. Pantin, are you ready? Can I get you anything before we go on?”

Pantin looked at the pretty-eyed studio escort in the mirror, smiled at her sweetly, then said,

“I’m fine.”

chapter 87

D
ark called Riggins from an FBI sedan headed south on I-95 at truly unsafe speeds.

“Riggins, I need a plane.”

“Steve? Is that you?”

Dark was surprised that his former boss’s voice wasn’t slurred. The day before Christmas Eve was traditionally a day to get shitfaced. Most federal employees were cut loose at noon; nonessential government business shut down. Riggins enjoyed this time of the year more than most. He tended to avoid his family and tried to drown out the holidays with as much vodka as possible. Usually in a motel room, just in case anyone tried to call to wish him Merry Christmas or some shit like that.

“I need a plane now.”

“A plane to where?”

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out. Can you get one, fueled and ready to go?”

With Damien Blair gone, so were the mighty resources of Global Alliance. There was no chain of command, no redundancies built into the team. That meant there was no money. No planes. No staff. No fancy motorcycle delivered to your doorstep in ninety minutes or less.
Nothing.
Without Damien, the remnants of the team—Dark, Natasha, and O’Brian—were on their own. So Dark called on the only resource he had left.

“Shit, Dark. Are you serious? Is this a hunch, or do you have something solid?”

“Labyrinth is in custody, but he has one attack left,” Dark said. “I have most of the pieces, but I need a little while to figure it out. In the meantime, I need a plane fueled and ready to take me to pretty much anywhere in the world.”

“You don’t ask for favors often. But when you do . . .”

“Where are you?”

“At home. What kind of threat, Dark? What’s going to happen?”

“The worst kind. The kind where thousands and thousands of people die.”

Dark couldn’t see Riggins, of course, but he could imagine him sitting up straight in whatever bar stool he happened to be squatting on. Tom Riggins was a fuckup in every area of his life except one: his job. Which was good, because he’d sacrificed everything else for that one thing.

“I think I can get a plane ready,” Riggins said. “But I need one thing from you.”

“What’s that?”

“I need you to rejoin my team.”

“Fuck, Riggins, are you serious? We got to do this now?”

“Give me that one last satisfaction before I’m through. That we can work together again. Just like we used to. When we were a team, we were unstoppable. You remember those days?”

Yeah, Dark remembered those days. All too well.

“You’re too drunk,” he said.

“I’ll sober up by the time you figure out our location.”

The minutes were slipping by. What choice did Dark have?

“Yeah. Fine.”

And with those words, Steve Dark rejoined Special Circs. Even if the division itself was about to be dismantled, and its head was too far gone to save his own job, let alone anyone else’s.

By the time Dark arrived at Philadelphia International, Riggins had made good on his word. Cashed in every last chip and borrowed a few more to arrange for a private jet loaded with enough fuel to take them halfway around the world.

The problem is—where? It could have been any place Labyrinth had visited in the past few months. But then Dark thought about Labyrinth’s grudge against his brother.

I can move anything I want to anywhere in the world,
Blair had once boasted.
No questions asked.

Damien and Julian Blair were practiced with the same skills. They knew how to fund, acquire, and ship any object to pretty much anywhere in the world.

Like a dirty nuke, to Global Alliance HQ.

chapter 88

DARK

BOOK: Dark Revelations

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