Pia looked around. The room was perhaps twenty feet long, ten feet wide, and as high as twelve feet, lined with red brick on all four walls. On the wall opposite the bed was what looked like a planked oak door with no details. There was a sheen of condensation on every surface. Next to the platform-style bed was a toilet with no seat. Next to that was a sink with a single faucet. In the corner of one wall, where it met the ceiling, was a tiny window, but the light in the room came from big fluorescent lamps that hung incongruously from above. There was no clue as to where she was, and Pia had no memory of being taken anywhere. But she thought time had passed. There was daylight outside, but what day was it from which she remembered those events? Monday, perhaps.
Pia closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on something other than her throbbing head. Sunday. Yes, that was the day she went to see Berman at his house. With that, the memories came back in a rush: Berman, the camera, what she saw at Nano, Paul Caldwell, the blood sample from the ER lounge, Nano again, seeing the spherical nanorobots and being stopped by the police on the way back to Paul’s. Now she knew what had happened. She had been kidnapped by Zachary Berman. She knew she had to think hard about those events to recall all the details, but she was unable to concentrate.
In addition to her headache, Pia was stiff all over, especially where her injuries from the car wreck were still healing. Her broken left humerus in particular felt as if it had been broken all over again. The sling was still in place, as was the gauntlet cast for her left radial fracture. That felt fine. With some effort she got herself up into a sitting position on the side of the bed. She could see that there was enough chain for her to reach the toilet and the sink but that was about all. Sitting up made her left arm feel better.
When she was able to think a bit more clearly, Pia tried to figure out if anyone could possibly have seen her being kidnapped. Paul Caldwell must be expecting her back, but unless someone saw her getting taken, she would have simply disappeared. But she had been stopped by Boulder cops! They looked like Boulder cops, in what appeared to be a Boulder police cruiser, which was why she had pulled over to the side of the road, so unless Berman had bought them off, they would know. Pia considered the possibility, then sank back on the mattress. The cops had been in on it, she realized. The cops had stayed in their cruiser while Berman took her. If they were real cops.
She had been in a terrible predicament before, but Pia felt more desperate this time. Not only did she have no idea where she was being held, but she hadn’t seen or heard a soul since she had started coming around. She thought about yelling out but didn’t think her headache would tolerate it. Best to wait. Was she someplace within Nano? She had no idea.
So it was almost with relief that a few minutes later Pia heard dead bolts being drawn on the heavy wooden door opposite where she was lying. A figure ducked his head to pass through the low doorway, and Pia knew before he looked up that it was Zach Berman.
CHAPTER 50
Paul paced around his apartment, waiting for George Wilson to show up so he could tell him his news. After listening to Paul talk for two minutes on the phone in the middle of the night, George had told Paul to stop. He had heard enough, and he was coming out to Boulder on the next flight he could get. George had refused Paul’s offer to pick him up from the airport, saying Paul should stay home in case Pia showed up. To Paul, George sounded much calmer than he himself felt. Impossible though it seemed, George had experience of a situation with Pia that was not dissimilar to what was currently going on.
The buzzer to the outer door rang and no sooner had Paul buzzed George in than he was in the apartment.
“Any word?” George asked the moment he came into Paul’s living room.
“I got a text. An hour ago.”
“From Pia?”
“Look.” Paul handed George his phone. The text identified Pia as the source and read, “Heading home. Don’t worry. Will call soon.”
“Did you reply?” asked George.
“Of course. I called and texted back and got a reply: ‘Don’t worry.’”
“What do you think?” asked George.
“It’s not Pia. That’s what I think. Someone’s got her phone.”
Paul told George what he’d found on the screen on Pia’s computer.
“I don’t think Pia thinks of the northeast as home, do you?”
“No,” said George. “I don’t.”
For a moment the two men looked at each other. The only way they were acquainted was through the prism of Pia, and their short interaction after Pia’s accident when George had sacked out for some hours in Paul’s apartment. The current circumstance wasn’t the most opportune moment to expand their friendship, as both were nervous, on edge, and tired.
“Thanks for calling me,” George said, and he meant it.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” admitted Paul. “You’re our white knight.”
George wondered about that comment but didn’t respond to it. Instead he said, “And you kept trying her cell?”
“No luck, just voice mail. If it was Pia, she’d pick up the phone.” Paul looked at George. He was a mess and had obviously pulled on the nearest clothes he could find, sweatpants and a sweatshirt over a cotton T-shirt. Paul would not have been caught dead in such an outfit, especially since George was wearing dress shoes with white socks. George noticed Paul looking at his feet.
“I know. I got the wrong shoes. My sneakers were wet after I went for a run in the rain. But after you called and after I cleared the trip with my chief resident, I flew out the door to catch the next flight to Denver, which was leaving in an hour. I came with nothing, but I did make the flight. I’ll need to pick up some stuff. But we have to put our heads together first. So tell me everything again, but fill in the details.”
The men took seats after Paul gave George a Coke. George had asked for one, saying he needed a quick caffeine hit. Then Paul went through the whole story, beginning at the end, the time thirty hours before, when Pia had texted Paul that she was coming right back to his apartment. George nodded every now and then, as if to say, “Got it.” Then Paul was finished.
“So you don’t know what she found at Nano?”
“No, but I think it was something extraordinary as she was so fired up she didn’t want to take the time to explain. She told me she’d tell me everything when she came back and that she would be coming back as soon as she could, apparently after doing something with the blood samples. I believed her. Unfortunately. And she sent me a text that she was on her way. I’m sure that was her.”
“Do you have even the slightest notion of what she might have found?”
“Only a very vague idea. She suspected Nano might have been pushing the envelope with human experimentation of some kind.”
“You mean with the nanorobots she was working with?”
“I don’t know any details. All we know is that there were some athletes involved somehow, one of which Pia had come upon while running and a second one. You remember all this, don’t you?”
“Yeah, of course. So what else happened the night she disappeared that you know of?”
Paul told George about the iris scanner situation, about the camera, and about Pia testing the idea with photos of her own eyes, and then apparently going off to Berman’s to get appropriate photos of the CEO.
“Damn,” said George with emphasis. “That’s so Pia. She puts herself in jeopardy back at that asshole’s house just to get photos so she could sneak around Nano?”