The zoom!
Her fingers trembling, she touched the adjustment buttons for the camera. It zoomed in and refocused slightly. For just a moment, before one of the orderlies abruptly leaned in and blocked her view completely, she thought she saw something.
A face.
A human face?
The glimpse had been too brief, the distortion of the wrinkled plastic too much.
How much time did she have left? If she could get just one more look—
She touched the UL button, then the hallway.
The guards were on their way back down the hall!
Her heart racing, Katharine rose from the chair and started back toward the double doors leading to the south corridor and Rob’s office.
The display! As soon as the guards came in, they’d see what she’d been doing! Whirling around, nearly stumbling in her haste to get back to the desk, she searched the screen again, finding a button marked “Main.” She hit it, and instantly the menu that had been displayed when she’d come in no more than five minutes earlier reappeared.
The gate!
Where was the button for the gate?
There — down near the bottom, at the right!
She stabbed at it, waited just long enough to see the image on the display monitor change, then fled across the lobby. Pushing her way through the double doors, she paused to make them stop swinging, then dashed down the hall to Rob’s office, slipped inside, and switched the lights back on.
Leaning heavily against the desk, she waited for her heartbeat to return to normal and her breathing to even out, then picked up her purse. Switching the lights out, she left the office for the second time in ten minutes, locked it, and started toward the double doors.
For a moment she had the terrible feeling that the two guards would be waiting for her, knowing what she’d been doing. If they questioned her, what could she say? That she’d been worried when the guard hadn’t been at his post and was looking for him?
Would they believe her?
Pushing the doors open, she stepped into the lobby. To her vast relief, the two guards were not waiting for her. One of them, the one who had been there before the van’s arrival, was seated behind the desk again, thumbing through a magazine. As she entered the lobby, he looked up.
“Dr. Sundquist. I thought you’d left.”
Was there suspicion in his voice? “Just finishing up a few things,” she replied. Then, when she was halfway across the lobby, she suddenly knew exactly what to say to put any suspicions to rest. “What was that van that came in a few minutes ago?” she asked, turning back to face the guard. “Isn’t it awfully late for deliveries?”
The guard smiled. “One of our trucks,” he said. “The driver just stopped to find out where we wanted him to park it.”
“Well, it’s nice to know we’re not the only ones working late,” Katharine said, returning the guard’s smile. “But how come that doesn’t make me feel any less tired?”
The guard chuckled. “Doesn’t ever make me feel less tired, either.”
With a final good night, Katharine left the building and hurried toward her car.
The guard had lied.
Obviously, something was going on she wasn’t supposed to know about. But what was it?
And how could she find out?
Was the corpse that had been delivered tonight — if it truly was a corpse — somehow connected to the alarming video and the skeleton in Rob’s laboratory? That was ridiculous. There was no reason to make such a connection.
But the images of the anomalous skull from the Philippines and the film of the slaughtered creature were also still fresh in her mind. An image and a film that were stored in files locked away behind a password, just as whatever had arrived in the van was now hidden away in a lower level she hadn’t known existed until tonight.
Every instinct she possessed told Katharine that somehow all these things were related.
The body — if that’s what it was — that had been delivered just now.
The mutant — if that’s what it was — that had been killed in the Philippines.
And the skeleton she herself had excavated right here on Maui.
But how was she going to find out what the connection was? As she drove through the darkness toward the gates of the estate, she wondered how she might gain access not only to the files hidden away in the computer, but to the lower level of the north wing as well. Slowing to let the gates open, she came to a disturbing realization: security here was far tighter than Rob Silver had told her.
Just as she’d remembered, there were no lights illuminating the gates, yet she was positive that as her car passed through them, the guard in the lobby was watching her as clearly as if it were high noon. The thought sent a shiver down her spine, and though she kept telling herself that she was being silly, she couldn’t rid herself of the eerie feeling that she was being watched until she emerged from the narrow road from the estate onto the Hana Highway. Even then it didn’t quite leave her, and as she sped toward Makawao, she continued to glance in the rearview mirror, searching for some sign that someone was following her.
Though she saw nothing, the creepy feeling stayed with her.
Though the television was droning as Katharine entered the house, Michael was not watching it. Sprawled out on the sofa, he was fast asleep, and when she bent down to kiss his forehead, he barely stirred. Dropping her leather bag on the floor next to her sleeping son, Katharine used the remote control to turn off the television, then went into the kitchen to find something to eat. The remains of a pizza — not quite half of it — sat on the kitchen counter, cold in its grease-stained box. Transferring two pieces to a plate and slipping them into the microwave, Katharine poured herself a glass of wine while the pizza heated. Taking the pizza back to the living room, she set it down on the coffee table, but then, before settling down onto the floor to have her meal, she moved though the house, locking the doors and windows.
And pulling the curtains.
Before she pulled the last one, she stared out into the night, nearly shivering with the strange sensation that someone was watching her.
But that’s ridiculous, she told herself. There’s no one out there. No one’s watching you!
Repeating those words to herself, though, did nothing to dispel the paranoia that had come over her as she’d left the research pavilion that night. She closed the curtain before going back to the coffee table to eat the pizza Michael had left for her.
She was just finishing the first piece when Michael stirred on the sofa and the rhythm of his breathing changed, taking on a labored quality. Within seconds his feet began kicking and his arms thrashed in the air. Katharine tensed, terrified that the awful scene of last night, when he’d fled into the darkness and not come back until hours later, was about to be replayed. Getting up from the floor, she went around the coffee table, crouched down, and laid a gentle hand on him. “Michael? Michael, wake up! You’re having a bad dream.”
He moaned and tried to turn away from her, but she put her hand firmly on his shoulder and shook him. “Michael! Wake up!”
Abruptly, Michael’s whole body convulsed, and then he was sitting up, instantly awake. Startled, he stared at her.
“What was it?” Katharine asked. “What were you dreaming about?”
“The night di—” Michael began, but instantly cut himself off.
“The what?” Katharine asked. Her eyes fixed on him as she tried to figure out what the word was that he’d cut off.
Michael, reddening, knew by the way his mother was looking at him that there was no point in trying to lie about it. “I went on a night dive,” he finally said.