The Soul Collectors (24 page)

Security
, she thought.
A standard-issued fed, maybe Secret Service
.

‘Sergey,’ Casey said, ‘I’ve decided to let Dr McCormick into the investigation.’

‘And Jackson Cooper,’ she said.

Casey nodded. ‘And Jackson Cooper.’

Sergey didn’t so much as glance at her, but she caught the hardness in the man’s gaze, a single-minded determination fighting like hell against a mounting horror.

‘I have the plane in the air, with the lab people,’ he said. ‘Everyone we need is on it. Brightest minds and the best equipment.’

‘What’s going on?’ Casey said.

Sergey’s voice was calm now, like a doctor steeling himself before handing over a terminal diagnosis to a patient. ‘You need to stand here and listen to me. You need to hear all of it.’

‘Tell me now.’

‘The bastards found the safe house. Taylor –
wait
, Jack.’

Sergey had blocked Casey’s path. Pressed both hands against Casey’s chest and pushed like a man keeping a stone statue from toppling over. Casey was a good foot taller than Sergey and three times as wide and doing everything in his power to shove the agent aside and then race through the blockade of suits crowding the doorway. Darby could only think,
You’re going to need more bodies
.

‘Taylor and Sarah aren’t there,’ Sergey said. ‘Did you hear me? Taylor and Sarah
aren’t there.
’

‘The implants, you said –’

‘The satellites locked on to their signals. We got a blip in Connecticut and then the signals vanished, we don’t know why yet.

‘Now listen to me, Jack.
Listen
. The plane’s going to touch down in Florida at any minute. I’ve been on the phone with the Sarasota police. They’re at the house now, and they promised not to go inside the house until our people arrive. We’re going to get the crime scene fresh. The forensic guy you like, Drake? He’s going to go into the house. Alone. He’s going in with a video camera. We’re going to have it linked up to a secured satellite link and you’re going to be able to see and hear everything inside the techs’ van. We’re setting up the equipment right now. We’re –’

‘
Are you out of your goddamn mind?
I’m not staying here –’

‘Listen to me, Jack.
Listen
. They’re bringing your wife and daughter here.
Here
. The Boston office received a phone call from a young girl claiming to be your daughter. Came in a couple of hours ago. I heard it. They patched the recording to my phone. It’s her voice, Jack. Sarah’s. It didn’t sound doctored or spliced together. It was
Sarah’s
voice, Jack, I’m certain of it.’

Something – maybe the relief of knowing his wife and daughter were alive, or maybe just the hope of it – made Casey back off. Sergey’s hands dropped and fell to his sides. His olive-skinned forehead shone with perspiration.

Casey, to his credit, forced himself to stay in the room. His attention retreated inward, but the fear and worry and panic were all still there, radiating off him like waves of heat.

‘Sarah gave an address,’ Sergey said. ‘It’s local. She said you have to go there alone. Just you, no federal agents or Secret Service.’

Darby glanced back to Keats, thinking she was right about him, about his being Secret Service.

Casey said, ‘And do what?’

‘Wait for her to call. She said she’s going to call. At one.’

Darby checked her watch. Quarter to nine.

‘I think Taylor’s with her,’ Sergey said. ‘I heard crying in the background. Sounded like a woman.’

48

Darby spoke up for the first time: ‘What’s the address?’

Both Sergey and Casey snapped their attention to her, startled, and glared at her as if to say,
Who the hell are you and how did you get in here?

‘No. 62 Mason,’ Sergey said. ‘The house –’

‘Is where the Rizzo family lived in Brookline,’ Darby finished for him.

Sergey nodded.

‘Who’s there now?’

‘Family named Hu,’ he said. ‘Two daughters, ages six and nine.’

Darby saw the knowledge in the man’s eyes and said, ‘They’re dead.’

‘I can’t say that for sure, not yet.’ A visible sadness swept through his voice and body. ‘We pulled the family’s records, got their numbers and started making calls. Father hasn’t shown up for work and daughters haven’t been to school.’

‘How long?’

‘Three days.’

‘Mother?’

‘Works from home.’ Sergey flicked his weary gaze back to Casey. ‘I haven’t sent anyone to scope out the house yet. I wanted to get your input first since you know these people better than anyone else.’

Fear rose in Casey’s eyes and the man tightened his jaw against it. She sensed most of the people here were afraid – afraid that their lives could possibly be at stake. But they didn’t know how to hold the terror. They didn’t have Casey’s experience, and she sensed they were looking to him not only for direction but also for guidance as to how to act. And Casey knew it. He stood steady on his feet, thinking over the rising swells of fear for his wife and daughter, and looked away from the gazes.

A cell phone rang. Sergey reached into his pocket and took the call. Motioned to Casey to give him a moment.

Casey turned to the desk where she had sat with Coop and ran the big fingers of one hand along the edges.

Darby needed to say what came next. Casey probably already knew it, but the words still had to be spoken out loud.

She went over to the door, shut it and then returned to him. He was still running a hand across the edge of the desk. She could hear Sergey whispering in the corner, murmured voices and ringing phones coming from somewhere beyond the wall.

‘Special Agent Casey –’

‘Jack,’ he said, absently. ‘I’m not a federal investigator any more.’

‘But you were one once, Jack, so you know you can’t go to the house.’

‘They won’t kill me. Not yet.’ His voice sounded flat. Detached. ‘They’re going to send me a message first.’

‘They already did. The phone call from your daughter.’

Casey shook his head. ‘That was to get my attention. Now they’ll give me a demonstration of their intentions. Why else would they deliberately pick the Rizzo house?’

‘They left something there for you to find. Something they want you to see.’

‘Right.’

‘Have they done something like this before?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Have they contacted an investigator?’ she asked. ‘Taken a family member?’

‘Or, in my case, an entire family.’ He shook his head. ‘This is a first.’

‘The Rizzo house is in a rural neighbourhood. Lots of trees, lots of places for a sniper to hide. You go there, you could get your head blown off the moment you step out of the car. Or they have the house rigged with an IED, get you and all of us out of the way.’

Casey didn’t answer.

‘The Sandman did that, remember?’

‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ he said.

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because I’m a special case.’

She waited for him to explain.

When he didn’t, she said, ‘Why are you a special case?’

‘They’ve tried to kill me,’ he said. ‘Twice.’

‘When?’

‘First time was in late 2001. Darren Waters was at a private treatment facility, but I had found one more suitable for his … condition. We moved him to a safe house while we made arrangements, setting up an alias for him, and this group found us and tried a stunt like the one they pulled at the Rizzo house. Waters survived. I did too, along with Sergey.’

Casey placed two fingers underneath the edge of the desk.

‘Second time was about five months after the Sandman case,’ he said. ‘I had moved away and remarried under a different name. Somehow they found us. We made it out of that one okay, but I reached out to the Bureau for help – my wife was pregnant – and they offered to put us into sort of a … I guess you could call it a special witness-protection programme. Only a handful of people know about it.’

‘People you know and trust?’

‘I know where you’re heading, and no, I don’t know these people, nor can I say with any confidence that I trust them. Could this group have people on the inside? Maybe.’

‘Probably,’ she said.

‘Computers are a more likely bet. Everything’s stored on them now. You know your way around them, you can sit somewhere halfway across the world and find people’s lives like this.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Get in and out without leaving a trace, usually.’

‘You know they’re good with computers?’

‘No, I don’t. That’s what’s infuriating about this group. We don’t know much of anything. They snatch kids and they disappear – the kids
and
the group.’ He lifted the corner of the desk with his fingers. ‘We know they’ve been doing it for at least four decades, maybe even longer, but we don’t know
why
they’re doing it.’ The desk legs hung two inches above the floor. ‘One of them escaped, and for all practical purposes he’s a vegetable. Oh, and the best part is that anyone who gets close to these people winds up dead.’

He let go of the desk. The legs slapped against the floor as he turned to her.

‘Now I hope you understand the reasoning behind all this subterfuge,’ he said. ‘I wanted to keep you far away from this. Now you’re in the middle of it and you can’t go back to an ordinary life. You realize that, don’t you?’

‘I’ll go to the former Rizzo home,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in there, I know my way around.’

‘Didn’t you just tell me that one or more of these people would be watching to –’

‘I can get inside the house without being seen.’

‘And how, exactly, are you going to do that?’

‘Simple architecture,’ Darby said. ‘They won’t see me coming, I guarantee it.’

49

Darby started with the most important part – how she was going to get into the house undetected – when Sergey snapped his phone shut.

‘Plane touched down,’ Sergey said, and then went on to explain how federal lab technicians were now riding inside a van, on their way to the safe house in Sarasota. The tech Casey liked, Drake, had already set up the equipment needed for the video feed.

‘You know those small lights you can wear on your forehead?’ Sergey said. ‘The one attached to the straps, looks like a miner’s light? Drake’s going to be wearing something like that, only instead of a light it’ll have a video camera. We just tested it out, got a crystal-clear picture. What he sees, you’ll see. What he hears, you’ll hear. It’ll be like you’re walking in there –’

‘How many?’

‘Just Drake. Nobody else –’

‘The agents you had guarding my family,’ Casey said. ‘There were eight of them, right?’

Sergey nodded.

‘And?’ Casey prompted.

‘All dead,’ Sergey said. ‘I don’t know what went wrong yet, Jack, but I swear we’ll –’

‘Is the video feed set up?’

‘In about an hour.’

‘Van out front?’

Sergey nodded. ‘Now, about the Rizzo house, I’m thinking –’

‘Talk to her, she’s already got a plan, a solid one.’

Then Casey whisked past them, and Darby saw the ghosts of his dead wife and unborn daughter hanging in the man’s frightened eyes. She watched him open the door and push his way past the bodies, wondering how much violence and suffering a person’s mind could take before it broke him.

The door shut and Darby looked at Sergey, expecting to see some of that brash cockiness she’d witnessed at the BU Lab when the man had played the role of the army officer, Billy Fitzgerald, the second-in-command of the facility. She didn’t see any, but he straightened, puffing up his chest as he took in a deep breath. With Casey no longer in the room, Sergey was going now to give her the lay of the land, take this moment to lecture her about who was in charge around here. He came up to her and she was surprised to find what looked like compassion swimming in his tired brown eyes.

Darby said, ‘You have a problem with me being here, let’s get it out on the table right now before we get moving.’

‘I wish you weren’t here, but not for the reasons you think. I’m assuming Jack told you why he wanted you kept inside the quarantine chamber.’

She nodded.

‘He was adamant about that – about not wanting you anywhere near this,’ he said. ‘Truth be told, I wanted to bring you into the fold from the beginning, after we found out what had happened at the Rizzo house. I told Jack you’d seen these people up close, for one, and with your background and experience, I argued it would help to have a pair of fresh eyes. I’ve been working this thing far too long now.’

‘How long?’

‘Since they took my son.’

He saw the confusion on her face and said, ‘Jack didn’t tell you about Arman?’

‘No.’

‘They took him when he was five,’ Sergey said. ‘Came into the house in broad daylight and shot my wife when she answered the door. Fifteen years ago, this happened. Arman would be twenty today.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘My fault. I should have … I was a young hotshot profiler full of drive and ego and thought I could crack this group. Maybe you can help me now. Let’s hear this plan of yours.’

She told him. The man listened to her intently, without interrupting, and when she finished, he thought it over for a moment and then nodded.

They discussed equipment next, Darby giving him exact names and specifications.

‘I can do that,’ Sergey said. ‘Okay, let me make some phone calls. I’ll meet you out front in a few minutes.’

‘What about the gun charges?’

But he had already opened the door and run off. The crowd blocking the doorway had dispersed, and when she emerged into the bullpen she saw that it had gone back to normal, everyone working the phones or their computers, people flipping through case files, people moving in and out of doorways, everyone busy.

Coop stood off to the side, waving to her.

‘Freedman here?’ she asked.

‘No, he left about an hour ago. Gun charges have been dropped. Didn’t take much time since it was bullshit to begin with.’

‘I’ve got to get my stuff from inventory.’

The cop seated on a stool behind the grille rose slowly from his chair and then took his sweet goddamn time to collect the envelopes storing her wallet, keys, cell phone, belt and shoulder holster. She was without a sidearm. Her MK23 had been confiscated by the state’s lab techs for testing.