Relentless (12 page)

‘‘I see you’re still carrying that overgrown knife of yours . . .’’

The Thresher didn’t reply, looking blandly into her eyes.

‘‘Thought maybe you would’ve traded up to a gun or something by now. Kill anybody with it lately?’’ she asked.

He turned to leave.

‘‘It’s not for buttering toast, love.’’

‘‘Okay, you owe me big for this one,’’ Lisa huffed, marching into Daniel’s office.

‘‘What? Did you get something?’’ he replied, glancing up at her. He was shuffling papers, trying to find his desk, which was beneath them . . . somewhere. Probably.

She sighed, frustrated at his lack of attention.

‘‘Well?’’ he prodded. He clutched another large stack of papers, opened the filing cabinet to his left, and began sorting them in.

‘‘Do you remember Barry?’’

‘‘No,’’ he replied without looking up.

‘‘My ex-boyfriend Barry? We went out for a year before he decided he needed a girlfriend who wasn’t smarter than him?’’

‘‘Still no.’’

Lisa frowned. ‘‘He’s got a job as vault security at the bank’s main branch downtown. I had to promise the sleazeball that I’d go out with him again sometime, but he tracked down Collin Boyd’s last bank statement for me and . . .
get this
. Collin’s cell phone bill is still being paid. The most recent payment—four days ago—was paid by automatic debit.’’

‘‘How can the phone company collect from a dead man’s bank account?’’

She smiled for the first time. ‘‘Because the payment wasn’t taken from Collin’s account. The billing was changed a week ago to an account belonging to someone else.’’

The stack of papers fell from Daniel’s hands and fluttered across the floor, as he looked up at her.

‘‘Grant Borrows,’’ she grinned, enjoying his growing excitement.

‘‘We’ve got his name!’’ he said, breathlessly.

‘‘Um, hello,
I
got his name,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ll tell you the rest, but first you have to tell me something.’’

‘‘
Lisa
. . .’’ Daniel’s eyes scanned the ceiling for nothing. ‘‘Don’t do this now . . .’’

It wasn’t the first time she’d used her investigative skills to try and bargain her way into his past. Her growing obsession with knowing everything she could about him was something he found not only inappropriate, but annoying to the highest degree.

When she didn’t respond, he sighed. ‘‘What is it?’’ he asked resignedly.

‘‘I just want to know why you do this, that’s all,’’ she said innocently, clinging tightly to a manila folder she’d just retrieved from her shoulder bag. ‘‘Why you study, well . . . what we study.’’

‘‘Fine,’’ he grimaced, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his eyes. ‘‘I guess it goes back to my mother.’’

Lisa settled into the chair opposite his desk.

‘‘I never knew my dad. He ran out on her before I was born. And having no siblings, it was just me and Mom for my entire childhood. I had an insatiable curiosity about how things work, but it made me accident-prone—constantly sticking my fingers into electrical sockets or trying to open batteries to see the acid inside or . . . well, you get the idea. But no matter what kind of danger I fell into, I always managed to bounce back. Mom said I was just too curious and stubborn to quit learning—I had no time for anything else.

‘‘I was fifteen when the world changed. Mom was crossing the street on her way home—right in front of our house—when a car hit her doing fifty.’’

Lisa gasped, yet Daniel continued his story as if giving a clinical dissertation.

‘‘She suffered many injuries, but it was the brain damage that proved irreparable. The doctors told me that she still had brain activity, that she was able to see and comprehend, but the part of her brain that allowed her to communicate had been damaged beyond repair. Essentially, she was still my mother ‘in there,’ in her head, but she was trapped and couldn’t express herself, couldn’t
be
herself.

‘‘I became obsessed with the human brain. I received my doctorate in neuroscience. Finding alternative ways of allowing my mother’s brain to express itself, beyond normal human interaction, became my obsession. But I went beyond the typical fields and embraced extrasensory studies in addition to my continued work on uncovering the deepest mysteries of the human brain. And I subsequently became the laughingstock of my post-graduate studies. Now will you please hand me that file?’’

He could tell he’d surprised her. She placed the file on the desk without a word.

He grabbed it and began scanning through it quickly. ‘‘Mm, no picture . . .’’ he muttered.

Lisa snapped back to reality. ‘‘I couldn’t find records of any kind for anyone with the name ‘Grant Borrows’ before five days ago. No medical records. No tax history. Not even a Social Security number. It’s undoubtedly a fabricated identity.’’

‘‘What’s this medical discharge report? And how on earth do you get this stuff?’’

‘‘I know a guy who knows a guy. The Garden Grove Hospital report you have there is our biggest lead. He was treated there for various injuries the same night as the Glendale fire . . .’’

‘‘Let me guess,’’ Daniel interjected. ‘‘He was treated for, among other things, burns?’’

She nodded. ‘‘Along with a minor concussion, various cuts and bruises, and a
bullet wound
.’’

Daniel whistled. What kind of danger was he about to fall into?

14

Grant was thunderstruck. Confused, and a little dizzy.

Staring back at him wasn’t a security guard, a policeman, or even a secretary.

It was a woman. And likely the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Blond and cherry-lipped. Blue eyes alive with mischief. Dressed in a worker’s jumpsuit not that different from his own, though her curves shaped it into something almost trendy. Her mouth was turned up faintly, in seductive amusement.

‘‘I was starting to think you’d
never
get here,’’ she said in a slight Southern drawl.

Her right arm was out, a gloved hand pointed at him as if a gun. But she held no weapon. She gave a
click
as if cocking a trigger, then slinked her way around Grant, eyes still holding his, until she was past him. At the last moment, she winked.

She slowly walked toward MacDugall, her hand leveled at his head the entire time. ‘‘Now you be a good boy,’’ she said to the CEO, ‘‘and tell this good-lookin’ fella the same thing you told me.’’

Grant was stupefied. It was ridiculous. Yet MacDugall was watching the woman’s every move, her every gesture, as if he fully expected her to pull the gun’s imaginary trigger any second.

Grant shifted uncomfortably on his feet, almost feeling sorry for MacDugall.

When MacDugall didn’t speak up, she placed the tip of her finger next to his temple.

‘‘O-okay, okay!’’ he said, beads of sweat visible on his forehead. ‘‘I, uh . . . I wasn’t lying when I said I don’t know you, son. But I know what’s
happened
to you.’’

Grant slowly shuffled back toward the desk, his attention suddenly shifting from the beautiful woman. ‘‘Did you do this to me?’’

MacDugall shook his head quickly, desperately. ‘‘No! I just . . .’’ He blew out a breath. ‘‘We research and develop new technologies here. Of all kinds. On a few rare occasions, we’ve done some—some highly specialized, custom research—’’

The blond woman prodded him with her finger. ‘‘Get to the good part already.’’ She rolled her eyes impatiently.

Who was this woman? Why was she
helping
him?

‘‘Quite some time ago, when we were a much smaller operation,’’ MacDugall said, eyes shifting like mad, ‘‘we conducted some very . . . next generation research and experimentation on behalf of a well-paying client. It was all kept very quiet, completely off the books.’’

‘‘What kinds of experiments?’’ Grant immediately demanded.

‘‘Mr. Evers, the client, asked us to develop technologies—mechanical, pharmaceutical, whatever—capable of
enhancing
the functions of the human body.’’

The blond woman shot Grant a look as if this revelation vindicated her strange actions.

‘‘Evers . . .’’
Julie said thoughtfully in Grant’s ear.

He turned his head and whispered back, ‘‘You know that name?’’

‘‘No, I don’t think so. Evers . . . Evers . . .’’
she repeated, as if trying to jar it free from her mind.

‘‘And did you succeed in your experiments?’’ the blond woman prompted.

‘‘No!’’ MacDugall cried. ‘‘Never! That’s what I’ve been trying to
tell
—’’

Grant jumped when a blaring siren wailed out, sounding as though it had filled the entire building.

The woman, suddenly furious, turned to MacDugall and said, ‘‘BANG!’’ He recoiled violently, as if the faux gun in her hand had shot him in the head. But before he realized the truth, she backhanded him into unconsciousness. One of his hands fell limp and Grant could see that MacDugall had pressed some kind of alarm button attached to the underside of the arm on his chair.

It occurred to Grant that he was feeling the same way he’d felt on that first day, a week ago, when he’d found out his life had been changed. Nothing made any sense, and things could
not
get any more bizarre . . .

The next thing he knew, the blond woman had grabbed him by the hand and was dragging him through the secretary’s office and out into the hall. ‘‘Come
on
!’’ she sighed, thoroughly exasperated.

The last thing Grant saw of MacDugall’s office was a security camera over the door, swiveling to follow him.

Swell.

This was just the best plan ever
.

The blond woman led Grant to the elevator area—past the secretarial pool, none of whom seemed to care very much about the sirens— and brandished a screwdriver from one of her pockets. The light above the doors indicated that this car was currently on the fifth floor and going down.

She wedged the flat-head between the doors, prying them open. Then she looked back and winked at Grant. ‘‘See ya at the bottom,’’ she said merrily. She stepped off the ledge and fell straight down into the empty shaft.

Grant’s breath caught in his throat, not believing what he’d just seen. Was this woman
insane
?

An elevator to his right dinged, opened, and spit out a handful of security guards, decked in military body armor.

There was no time to think.

‘‘Hold it!’’

Still wearing his jumpsuit and matching gloves, Grant dove into the empty elevator shaft after the woman, grasping desperately at the center bundle of cables that held the elevator. One look down found him fighting the urge to panic.

Two of the guards stood in the doorway above him. A third knelt and tried reaching down far enough to grab Grant with a powerful hand.

One of the standing guards pulled two items from a belt clip: one he barked into, the other he pointed like a pistol. But it didn’t quite look like a pistol.

He fired. Grant ducked. Two small darts grazed his left arm, still attached to the guard’s device by long wires.

Oh, of course. Taser
.

Grant began making his way down the cable, hand-over-hand. Faster and faster he descended, as the guard above shot at him again.

He had started from the sixteenth floor, but he tried not to think about that, or anything else, except that next handful of cable.

Just take one more handhold. One more.

Come on.

One more
.

Adrenaline was pumping hard through his veins when his feet finally touched solid ground. His arms were exhausted and he was covered in sweat, panting hard, but he’d made it.

Except he hadn’t. This wasn’t the bottom; it was only the top of the elevator car. Above him, he could see shadows still moving from the open door he’d come from. He counted the floors as best he could, estimated that he was around the fourth or fifth floor now.

There was a crack in the door in front of him, less than an inch wide.

She went through here
.

If she could, so could he.

He squeezed his fingers through the crack, arms still shaky from the exhausting descent. But he managed to force the doors apart with little difficulty. He found himself a few feet below the floor level, so he had to climb up and roll over onto the marble floor. He lay there for a few moments, catching his breath.

When he looked up, a pristinely groomed woman in an immaculate pantsuit stood nearby, waiting for an elevator car.

She was looking down at him as if he were a leper.

His jumpsuit grimy and wet with sweat, Grant stood slowly, still struggling to breathe. Her bug eyes followed him as he strode by her, and he pointed back at the open elevator shaft.

‘‘Don’t ride that one,’’ he said.

Her face blanched as she nodded.

He spotted a men’s room nearby and ducked inside, locking the door behind him.

‘‘Don’t do this often, do ya, big boy?’’

He spun around and there she was—the blond woman from the office. She was leaning back against the sink, untying one of her shoelaces. Once done, she wrestled it out of her shoe. She shoved the string into her pants pocket.

‘‘Still . . . points for makin’ it this far,’’ she said, smiling. ‘‘You might just be worth savin’.’’

He leaned over on shaky arms, hands on his knees, and tried to catch his breath, while allowing himself a moment to take her in more fully. She had a rosy complexion and strong cheekbones. Her head was tilted to the side as she studied him with deep-set, unconcerned eyes.

‘‘So you
do
do this sort of thing a lot?’’ he asked between gasps.

‘‘Zip cord makes the trip down easier,’’ she said, holding out a wadded-up, black nylon rope, clipped to her belt on some kind of pulley.

‘‘
That’s
what I forgot when I left the house this morning,’’ he wheezed, still panting.

She acknowledged his sarcasm with a smile. Then she grew serious. ‘‘The guards know what floor we’re on by now. Time for Plan B.’’

She turned and stepped into one of the bathroom stalls. He staggered after her.

She stood atop the commode, and had her screwdriver out again, unscrewing the grate from a heating duct in the ceiling.