CHAPTER 92
317 West Susquehanna Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 28, 1:01 a.m.
Eddie tensed suddenly. His entire body went rigid. Skylar had no idea why until she saw the six heavily armed federal agents moving swiftly toward him. Weapons drawn. Safeties off. Eddie started screaming hysterically. The Philadelphia-based Homeland Security agents had been waiting for them in the shadows. They were now less than twenty feet away. Eddie and Skylar were completely surrounded. How could I not have seen them? Skylar thought.
“FREEZE!” barked the lead agent. “FEDERAL AGENTS!”
Skylar pulled Eddie in tight, clutching him with every bit of strength she had as his body started to convulse.
The lead agent barked, “PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!”
Skylar kept a firm grasp on Eddie, and screamed, “If I let go of him, he’ll harm himself!”
His tone did not waver. “RAISE YOUR HANDS AND KNEEL, OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE.”
There was no question in Skylar’s mind that he and his associates would follow through on the threat. So she complied. The echo box and laptop supercomputer tumbled from Eddie’s grip, falling to the street as he started seizing violently. He collapsed near his precious devices, SLAPPING himself as hard as he could. Ten times. Twenty times. There would be no stopping it this time.
Skylar looked on helplessly as the agents closed in. She pleaded, “He needs to be restrained!”
The agent was now standing directly in front of her. “Happy to oblige.” He smirked. “I’m Agent Kendricks.” He nodded to one of his subordinates, who cuffed her left wrist, and then her right, behind her back. It was the first time Skylar had ever been in restraints, but all she could think of was Eddie.
He had slapped himself almost fifty times by the time the agents managed to restrain him. His face looked raw. His cheek was bleeding. It took four agents to hold him down long enough to get his arms behind his back and cuffs around his wrists.
Skylar tried to sound reassuring. “Eddie, I’m still here. I’m right here with you. Try to focus on my voice. Pretend that I’m still holding you.”
He continued writhing helplessly in the middle of the street, even after they had released him. The handcuffs dug into his wrists. The silver cuffs quickly became stained with blood as the metal bit into his skin. He couldn’t stop himself, seemingly oblivious to the pain.
Skylar struggled to keep from crying. Her eyes welled with tears. “Eddie, can you hear me? You’re hurting yourself. Stop. Please, stop . . .”
And then, without warning, he did. Eddie stopped moving altogether. He was no longer even blinking.
Agent Kendricks immediately moved to him, getting on his knees, checking Eddie’s pupils. They were dilated. “He’s gone into shock.”
“Take his goddamn handcuffs off!” Skylar screamed.
Kendricks did so. Eddie just lay there limply.
Skylar pleaded, “Please, let me help him. I won’t go anywhere.”
Kendricks rebuffed her without emotion. “He is no longer a danger to himself. An ambulance is on its way.” A siren could be heard approaching in the distance.
“Where are you going to take him?”
“That’s none of your concern.” The agent’s tone was authoritative.
“Like hell it’s not! Where are you going to take him?”
He eyeballed her. “If I were you, I’d be more concerned about where we’re taking you.” She eyeballed him right back.
He then turned to one of his subordinates, who was bending down to pick up the echo box. “Sir, what should we do with—”
Kendricks suddenly drew his weapon and took direct aim at his fellow agent. “Back away! NOW!”
The young agent jumped back, bewildered. “Sir, I was only trying to—”
“Our orders are that no one touches either machine. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.” The young agent took several more steps away from the echo box, assuming that contamination might be a factor. He was only too happy to get the hell away from the thing.
Skylar kept her eyes glued to Eddie as the ambulance arrived on the scene. Its siren was deafeningly loud. She realized that if he hadn’t gone into shock, Eddie would now be in tremendous pain. Several agents surrounded the paramedics as they tended to him. Skylar no longer had a clear view of what was being done to him. It was killing her. “I’m still with you, Eddie.”
“He’s in shock,” said one of the paramedics. “He can’t hear you.”
“You have no idea what he can hear!” she snapped.
Every agent immediately turned his or her attention to Philadelphia Director of Homeland Security Albert Shoals, as he arrived. There were four other agents with the director, two on each side. One of each pair carried a large metal case handcuffed to his right wrist. Shoals approached Agent Kendricks. “Where is the device?”
Kendricks moved to the echo box and supercomputer lying in the street. “Nobody has touched either item since we apprehended the fugitives, sir.”
Director Shoals studied them. “They look like they were dropped.”
“They were, sir. The fugitive Edward Parks dropped them when he was surrounded.”
“Whatever the hell this thing does, you better hope it still does it.” Shoals nodded to the men with the cases, who approached the echo box and laptop lying in the street. One unlocked his case, placed the echo box inside it, locked it, and gave the key to Director Shoals. The other agent did the same with the laptop, locking it up and giving the key to the director.
The five men left as abruptly as they had arrived, and in the exact same formation. The men with the cases remained on either side of Shoals. The second agent in each pair flanked them on the outside, remaining a half step behind their counterparts. They got into a waiting blacked-out Suburban, the middle vehicle in a caravan of three. As the vehicles sped away in close formation, Skylar was certain that neither she nor Eddie would ever see the echo box again.
She turned back to Eddie as the paramedics moved him onto a gurney and started wheeling him toward the ambulance. “Eddie, I promise I will find you.”
He did not respond. Eddie had already been sedated. The gurney was placed in the rear of the ambulance. The doors were closed. And the ambulance sped off. Skylar did not look away until it was completely gone from view.
And all at once, Skylar felt as alone as she’d ever felt in her life.
Agent Kendricks stepped toward her. “Follow me.” He led her to a waiting vehicle.
“Please tell me where they’re taking him.” The agent did not respond. She quickly grew frustrated. “What harm will it do to tell me?”
He paused outside the vehicle. “The more accurate question is, Doctor, what good will it do? My understanding is that you’re never going to see your patient again.”
CHAPTER 93
Michael Barnes’s House, Swedesboro, New Jersey, May 28, 1:19 a.m.
Michael Barnes’s cell phone vibrated, sliding around the tan Formica counter of his small kitchen as the device rang and rang, just like it had the dozen other times Fenton had called recently. Once again, the call went through to voicemail. Barnes did not answer the phone because he could not hear it. He was busy with a shovel in the storage shed at the rear of his property, digging up the second of two storage containers he had so carefully packed years ago.
Barnes had purchased the home when he first started working for Dr. Marcus Fenton, because it was cheap, it afforded him the privacy he required, and Swedesboro and Woolwich Township were close, but not too close, to Woodbury and Harmony House. Seventeen minutes, door to door, and there was never any traffic. It didn’t bother him that the place was a dump.
The property was dimly lit by design. Barnes liked it that way. It gave the impression that the home’s resident was careless, and gave him a tactical advantage against most types of threat. The only light at the rear of the property came from the temporary work light Barnes had strung up across one of the storage shed’s beams. He had backed his Impala to the shed’s sagging entrance in part to block any view of his activities, as well as to reduce the distance he’d have to carry the unearthed containers. The first box was already in his back seat. The container had just barely fit, which was no coincidence. It was the largest container that would fit through the door. The second box would similarly squeeze into the vehicle’s trunk.