“What’s that?”
“Find out what Dr. Tanbyrn’s diagrams and algorithms mean. And figure out a way to access his iPad.” I stand, open the door. “Come on. Let’s find Charlene. Last I heard she was down the hall getting stitches.”
Stitches
Riah was watching the wasp build a nest around the helpless cockroach when the twins entered the office.
“Oriana called us,” Daniel told her and Cyrus. “She’s running a little late but should be here in the next twenty minutes or so.”
So, Williamson’s first name is Oriana. But who is she?
“We’ll wait for her before starting the video,” Daniel said to Cyrus, then: “But more importantly, did you hear about Dr. Tanbyrn?”
Riah immediately recognized the name; after all, she’d spent the day studying his research findings.
“No. What happened?”
“There was a fire at the center. He’s in the hospital.”
Cyrus looked puzzled. “In the hospital?”
“He was almost killed in the fire. Apparently, the arsonist who started the fire is dead.”
“Really?”
Darren answered for his brother, “The news report wasn’t really clear if he died in the fire or if he died when he was fleeing and the authorities tried to apprehend him.”
Cyrus was quiet for a long moment. “Well, let’s hope Dr. Tanbyrn pulls through.”
Darren set a tablet computer on the edge of the desk. Scrolled to an online news feed. “I’ll keep an eye on the story. Dr. Tanbyrn’s condition will no doubt be of concern to Oriana.”
“No doubt.” Cyrus reached for the intercom button on his desk phone next to his open laptop. “I’ll have Caitlyn bring us some coffee. While we wait.”
It takes a few minutes, but finally Xavier and I find Charlene in an exam room two doors down an adjacent hallway. There’s a fresh bandage on her arm.
“How many stitches did you need?” I ask her.
“Sixteen.”
“Sixteen.” Xavier nods. “Nice. We’re talking some quality scar material there.”
“I don’t want a scar, Xav.”
“Hey, they make great conversation starters. I’ve got one here on my knee from—”
“How’s it feeling?” I cut in, directing my question at Charlene. It’s really not a good idea to get Xavier started on scar stories.
“Local anesthetic. I can’t really feel it at all.”
“Glad to hear that.”
We move on to the reason we came, and she listens reflectively as I tell her what Xavier and I have been debating. When I finish, she gets right to the point: “If your thoughts could be fatal to someone else, it would be almost like having the ability to spread a thought-borne virus. How on earth could anyone fight against that?”
“Magneto,” Xavier mutters. “His helmet blocks Professor X’s telepathy from working. We could use a couple of those.”
The irony that Xavier’s first name is Professor X’s last name isn’t lost on me.
“Too bad they’re not real,” Charlene responds.
“You never know.”
Actually, knowing Xavier’s friends, I wouldn’t have been surprised if some of them were working on something like that as we speak.
A thought-borne virus.
An apt way to describe what we’re talking about. Frightening. I tell Charlene, “We came in here so we could take another look at the pages from Tanbyrn’s files. See if we can find a way into that iPad.”
As she’s pulling out Tanbyrn’s notes and iPad, the door beside me opens and a severe-looking nurse emerges, straddling the door frame. “There you are.” She levels her gaze at me as if she’s sighting down the barrel of a gun. “They’re waiting for you in the X-ray room.”
Charlene looks at me concernedly. “X-ray?”
“Just to check on something.” I’d kept the rib injury to myself, but now I gently tap my side. “Might be a cracked rib.”
“You broke a rib?” she gasps.
“Cracked it, maybe. Just a little. I’m not sure if it’s—”
“Jevin, why didn’t you say anything!”
A guy’s gotta at least try to be heroic.
“Um, no reason. Exactly.”
She looks at me reprovingly. “That rib better not be broken or I’m going to have to hurt you.”
“I’m not sure that’s really going to—”
The nurse clears her throat.
I signal to her that I’ll be with her in a moment, but say to Charlene, “I’ll be back as soon as I can. See if Fionna can help you get into that iPad. And Xavier, this guy Banner killed at least one person today. I want to find out what’s at the bottom of all this. Call your friends and have them pull up everything they can on Star Gate and Project Alpha. Any other telepathic research the military might be doing. I want the best conspiracy theorist minds out there on this thing.”
He smiles. “Groovy.”
As I leave, I notice I have six text messages from my producer at Entertainment Film Network telling me to call her.
Well, I guess someone’s been watching the news.
But this doesn’t feel like the right time to talk with her. I need to sort through some things first, decide exactly where we are on this project. Pocketing the phone, I follow the rather stout nurse to the X-ray room.
Cyrus Arlington knew that if that idiot Banner had been careless, there was the possibility that the police would be able to tie him to the fire. To the attempt on Tanbyrn’s life.
He’d never given Banner his name, had used only a prepaid cell phone that no one would be able to trace, had paid him the down payment of $12,500 in unmarked, nonsequential bills. But still…
As he waited for Oriana to arrive and drank the coffee that Caitlyn had brought in, Cyrus thought of what he would tell the police if they ever came knocking at his door.
While his jewel wasp finished encasing her roach.
Oriana
I’m lying on my side on the X-ray table finishing the second of four X-rays of my ribs when my phone rings. The technicians had asked me to leave it on a counter inside the protected area where they were working, but even from here I recognize the ringtone.
Fionna.
Well, that was quick.
I excuse myself, and the frizzy-haired woman working the X-ray machine declares in no uncertain terms that she needs two more slides before I can go anywhere.
“No problem.” I slip past her into the hall and answer my phone. A bit chilly without my shirt on.
“Nothing yet on Akinsanya or Tanbyrn’s iPad,” Fionna tells me. “It would be a lot easier if I had it in hand. But I do have something for you. Guess who your arsonist has been calling?”
“Who?”
“The CEO of RixoTray Pharmaceuticals.”
“What?”
“It was with an unregistered prepaid cell, but I was able to backtrace the call and follow the GPS location to—”
“Wait a minute. If it was unregistered, how did you backtrace it?”
“Through AT&T’s tech center.”
“You hacked into their—”
“Not exactly. They hired me to do that last quarter. I kept my notes. Anyway, the GPS location for a previous call matches his residential address, and the most recent call just happens to line up with his office at RixoTray’s corporate headquarters.”
“Nice work.”
“That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”
Actually, it was.
“Also, that passcode, the one you found in Banner’s pocket, well, it’s not just a password to the Lawson Center’s RixoTray files, it’s the one to a certain person’s computer.”