“Get your ass in gear. I don’t want her talking to this cop.” Barnes hung up the phone, confident that Dr. Skylar Drummond, Edward Parks, and his device would be back on the grounds of Harmony House within the hour.
CHAPTER 35
Harmony House, Woodbury, New Jersey, May 27, 11:17 a.m.
On her afternoon rounds, Nurse Gloria had stopped by room 237 to check on Eddie, as she often did. There was no sign of him or the echo box. This was no cause for concern, until a quick stop by the cafeteria showed no sign of him there, either. She approached Jerome behind the counter. “Have you seen Eddie?”
“Not today.”
Nurse Gloria was surprised. “You sure?”
“Sure as I can be. He’s kind of hard to miss.”
She nodded and headed to the two other places she thought Eddie might be: Dr. Fenton’s office and Dr. Drummond’s. Finding him in neither, she picked up a facility phone and dialed the extension for Security, to report the missing patient. Michael Barnes reported that Security was aware of the situation. “The patient was complaining of stomach pain and taken to a local hospital for observation.”
“When did this happen?”
“Ten thirty-seven.” He picked that time because he knew the nurse’s workday had started at eleven.
“Why wasn’t I notified?”
“It isn’t protocol to notify you.”
Nurse Gloria had never liked these security people. It was their combination of intensity and loyalty that made her uncomfortable. That, or just her innate fear of being discovered, which resulted in her approach to dealing with them: as little as possible. Today was an anomaly, just like the message she was going to send her secondary employer from the grounds of Harmony House. Her instructions were to send her communications at the end of the day from the confines of her residence, unless the matter was urgent. Gloria figured that Eddie and the box being off grounds qualified.
Her message read: EP & box off grounds. Location unknown. From the moment she hit “Send,” it took less than fourteen seconds for notice of the encrypted transmission to appear on one of the screens in Michael Barnes’s office. What Nurse Gloria could not have known was that any transmission that originated from or was received within the grounds of Harmony House was logged by the last man she would ever want to see it.
While the encryption might prevent him from reading the body of the message, the very fact that an encrypted transmission originated from within Harmony House immediately following her phone call to him was enough to set off all kinds of alarm bells.
Barnes saw the recipient’s number, but knew that the number would be a dead end. Anyone clever enough to have engaged the nurse so surreptitiously would use a relay to forward the message again and again until the trail ran cold. The ultimate recipient could be anywhere in the world, and would never be known. But that didn’t matter.
Nurse Gloria had made his job easy. And Michael Barnes was going to make sure that she paid for it dearly.
CHAPTER 36
American Heritage Foundation, Alexandria, Virginia, May 27, 12:03 p.m.
Bob Stenson normally arrived at the American Heritage Foundation before seven in the morning, but he played doubles tennis on Saturday mornings, and then treated himself to a ninety-minute deep-tissue Swedish massage, so he didn’t pull into the parking lot until after noon. He parked his Chrysler 300C, enjoying the crisp afternoon air as he entered the building. He was immediately approached by his most promising lieutenant, Jason Greers. “Sir, I tried reaching you on your cell . . .”
Stenson kept walking toward his office. “You know I take personal time on Saturday mornings.”
“Yes, sir, I do.” He followed his boss into his utilitarian office.
Stenson sat behind his desk. “So?”
“We got a message I thought you would like to know about right away.” Barely able to contain his excitement, Jason handed him a copy of Gloria’s text message.
Jason now had Stenson’s attention. “You’re correct.” He read the brief message again, remaining perfectly calm.
Stenson had learned over the years never to get excited, because there was no such thing as checkmate in this never-ending game of chess. There were only moves and countermoves, day in and day out. Some had much greater significance than others, but the game would always continue. Which was why he could allow himself to play his weekly tennis and deal with any crisis when he got back to the office.
The echo box might be the exception to this, but Stenson agreed with the majority of the government scientists: he doubted the technology would ever work. Was it significant that the device was off Harmony House grounds? Possibly. But there were other things that were far more certain. “Did you happen to note the time the message came in?”
“Yes, 11:19.” Jason Greers had a photographic memory.
“Do you know why that is significant?”
Jason thought for a moment. “Gloria Pruitt’s shift started at 11:00, so Parks probably left the grounds sometime before she arrived. She must have immediately noticed Eddie and the box were missing, and texted us right away. Which was exactly what we had instructed her to do.”
Stenson nodded. “Her diligence will also be her downfall. Barnes has that facility wired every which way to Sunday. He may not have been able to read the message, but I can promise you he now knows someone on their staff is playing for another team. It won’t take him long to figure out who it is, if he hasn’t already.”
“There’s no question he’ll take her out.” Greers spoke with certainty.
“He won’t do it himself, but you’re right.” There was no emotion in Stenson’s voice, because he had no emotional issue with letting Gloria Pruitt die. She was a chess piece about to be taken off the board, nothing more. And a pawn, at that. “He’ll have it done tonight. Which means we have a choice to make.”
“If we intervene, Barnes will recognize the scope of what he’s up against and further fortify his position. It will require a great deal more effort to establish a new foothold inside Harmony House.”
“Barnes is now aware that he has a security problem. He’s going to batten down the hatches no matter what we do.”
Greers grinned slyly, like he was about to reveal something big. “Have you considered the possibility that the echo box now actually works?”
Stenson cleared his throat. No, he hadn’t. Jesus, he was slipping. “Jason, if we could confirm that, we would devote the entirety of our very considerable resources toward retrieving it.”
Jason smiled with wonder. “It really would be astonishing, wouldn’t it? If the echo box works, I mean.”
“So astonishing that it’s also highly unlikely.”
The apprentice was determined to impress his mentor. “I’ve been thinking about how Edward and the box could have managed to leave Harmony House grounds.”
“He didn’t just walk off by himself.”
“No, he didn’t. He must have had help. And there is only one logical candidate.”
“The new resident. Dr. Skylar Drummond.”
“If our nurse’s reports are accurate, he wouldn’t trust anyone else enough to venture off facility grounds. This is the first time he’s left.”
“You’re assuming Parks was conscious.”
“If he wasn’t, he could have been taken by anyone at Harmony House. But if he went willingly, there is only one person he would have left with.”
“Have you confirmed that she was living with the victim of the subway event?”
The ambitious lieutenant nodded, certain that he had found the missing piece of the puzzle. “Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Stenson nodded, recognizing where Jason was going with this. “It’s still a bit of a stretch.”
“Michael Barnes is a psychopath. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“He’s a pit bull. He only does what Fenton tells him to. What reason could the good doctor have given him?”
“I can think of three. One is emotional. One is paranoid.”
“What’s the third?”
“That Fenton isn’t paranoid. The professor might have exposed something, intentionally or otherwise.”