He caught his reflection in the glass covering a picture on one wall. His jaw was firmly set and behind his eyes he could almost see the embers of anger stoking into a fire. He owed Sloane Macintyre nothing, nor did he owe anything to Geoffrey Merrick, but he would no more abandon them to an unknown fate than he’d strand a little old lady at a busy intersection.
Cabrillo snatched the bag off his bed and started topside, his body already responding to the first tingle of adrenaline.
12
ITwas inevitable that sand fleas would learn that the once abandoned prison deep in the desert was occupied again. Drawn by the scent of warm bodies, they had returned to the prison to act as a natural torture to the man-made ones meted out there over the years. Capable of laying sixty eggs a day, the first few that had entered the penitentiary had quickly grown to an infestation. The guards had been prepared with chemical sprays to keep the loathsome insects at bay. Their prisoners weren’t so lucky.
Merrick lay with his back propped against the hard stone wall of his cell scratching furiously at the bites that seemed to cover every inch of his body. In a perverse way it was good they had found him because the painful welts and constant new stings kept his mind focused on something other than the horror that had already taken place and the even greater calamity to come.
He cursed as a flea bit deep into the back of his ear. He caught the insect and crushed its body between his fingernails, grunting with satisfaction when he heard the carapace snap. A small victory in a war he was losing.
Without the moon, the darkness in the cell block was a tangible presence, a spectral ether that seemed to rush down Merrick’s throat whenever he opened his mouth and filled his ears so he couldn’t hear the whisper of wind he knew had to be blowing. The prison was slowly robbing him of his senses. The pervasive sand had choked his nose so he could no longer smell the food he’d been given, and without smell his sense of taste was but a dull suspicion that the meals were something other than dust. He was left only with his hearing and sense of touch. And with nothing to listen to and his body aching from so many days spent on a stone floor and now stinging with flea bites, they did him little good.
“Susan?” he called. He’d said her name every few minutes since being returned to his cell. She hadn’t once responded and he suspected she might have been dead but he continued anyway for no other reason than calling her name was more rational than giving in to the overwhelming urge to scream.
To his amazement he thought he heard her stir, a mewling sound like a newborn kitten and the rasp of cloth against stone.
“Susan!” he said more sharply. “Susan, can you hear me?”
He distinctly heard her moan.
“Susan, it’s Geoff Merrick.”Who else would it be? he thought. “Can you speak?”
“Dr. Merrick?”
Her voice was ragged and weak and yet it was the most glorious sound he had ever heard. “Oh, thank God, Susan. I thought you were dead.”
“I—um.” She faltered and coughed and that made her moan all the more loudly. “What happened? My face, it’s numb, and my body, I think my ribs are broken.”
“You don’t remember? You were beaten up, tortured. You said they never asked you any questions.”
“Did they hit you, too?”
Merrick’s heart squeezed. Through her pain and confusion, Susan Donleavy could still care about his condition. Most people never would have asked and just gone on about their own injuries. He wished, God how he wished, that she hadn’t been dragged into this nightmare. “No, Susan,” he said gently.
“They didn’t.”
“I’m glad about that,” she replied.
“I learned who kidnapped us, and why.”
“Who?” There was hope in her voice when she asked, as if putting a name and face to their captors would make their situation better.
“My former business partner.”
“Dr. Singer?”
“Yes, Dan Singer.”
“Why? Why would he do this to you?”
“To us, you mean. Because he’s sick, Susan, a twisted, bitter man who wants to show the world his warped vision of the future.”
“I don’t understand.”
Neither did Merrick. He couldn’t get his mind around what Singer had already accomplished and what he was about to carry out. It was all just too much. Singer had already killed thousands of people and no one knew it. Now he was preparing to kill tens of thousands more. And for what? To teach the United States a lesson about environmental control and global warming. That was part of it, but Merrick knew his former best friend all too well.
This was personal to Dan, a way for him to prove to Merrick that he had been the brains behind their success. They had been like brothers in the beginning, but Merrick was the charmer, the one who could turn a good phrase in an interview, so it was inevitable that the media singled him out as the face of Merrick/Singer and marginalized Dan to the shadows. Merrick had never thought this had bothered his partner. He’d been an introvert at MIT so why would it be any different in the real world? He now knew that it had, that Singer had fostered a hatred toward him that bordered on the pathological.
It had changed everything about Singer’s personality, driving him from the company he’d helped build and sending him to the fringes of the environmental movement, where he used his wealth to do everything he could to ruin Merrick/Singer. But when that failed he turned his back on his newfound eco-friends and returned to his home in Maine to lick his wounds.
If only that were true,Merrick thought. But Singer had used his time to let his hatred grow and fester.
And now he was back, with an incredibly audacious and horrifying plan. A plan that had already been taken so far that there wasn’t any way it could be stopped. He hadn’t abandoned his environmental crusade, but had taken it in a new and twisted direction.
“We have to get out of here, Susan.”
“What’s going on?”
“We have to stop him. He’s out of his mind, and the people he’s gathered together are environmental fanatics who don’t give a damn about humanity. And if that’s not enough he claims to have hired a bunch of mercenaries, too.” Merrick buried his face in his hands.
It was his fault. He should have seen Dan’s anger in the beginning and insisted that he get a share of the limelight. He should have recognized the fragility of Dan’s ego and how the attention paid to Merrick tore it to pieces. If he had, then none of this would be taking place. The sting of tears turned into sobs, and all thoughts of his own discomfort vanished as he was overcome by what was happening. He just kept repeating, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” without really understanding who he was apologizing to, Dan or his intended victims.
“Dr. Merrick? Dr. Merrick, please, why is Dr. Singer doing this to us?”
Merrick heard the agony in her voice but couldn’t reply. He was crying so hard it sounded as though his soul was being shredded. The wracking convulsions went on for twenty minutes until he’d cried his tear ducts dry.
“I’m sorry, Susan,” he gasped when he’d finally gained enough control to speak. “It’s just—” He didn’t have the words. “Dan Singer blames me because I was the public face of our company. He’s doing this because he’s jealous. Can you believe that? Thousands of people are already dead and he’s doing it all because I was more popular than him.”
Susan Donleavy didn’t respond.
“Susan?” he called and then louder, “Susan! Susan!”
Her name boomed and echoed, then faded. Silence once again filled the cell block. Merrick was certain that Daniel Singer had just claimed another victim.