Liquid fear

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

They’d dressed their wounds as best they could, using Briggs’s emergency first-aid kit. Alexis’s arm was the worst, and as Mark cleaned it with water and a gauze pad, she made little growling noises that scared him. He only hoped the pain was enough to keep her tamed.

His tooth was still throbbing, sending colossal waves of pain through his jaw, but he clung to its rhythm like a boat riding out swells.

“This has to be worked out between CRO and the government,” Burchfield was saying, although no one was listening to him. Anita was tending to David, who was slumped in the leather chair.

“Alexis,” Forsyth said. “The Lord spoke to me back there in the dark. The devil is in them pills. And I don’t think they can be trusted with either corporations or governments.”

“That’s why we’re keeping them,” Mark said.

“We’re all on the same team,” Burchfield said. “And if what I experienced is any indication, Briggs was onto a winner.”

“No,” Mark said. “The Seethe is gone. I looked around, and unless he had off-site storage, that jar was all he was able to synthesize.”

“Briggs didn’t go anywhere without our knowledge,” Burchfield said. “We’ve tracked him with GPS since the beginning. Picking you up at the airport was the only time he’s been out in three weeks.”

Mark pointed to the wet blotch in the concrete, where the liquid fear had mingled with old oil stains and Kleingarten’s blood. “Good luck cutting that up and isolating it, because that’s all we have left.”

“I’m back, honey,” Alexis said. “But you’ll have to tell me what happened.”

Her eyes almost looked normal. Still, there was something in them that inspired him to nudge the bloody plow blade away with his foot.

“Give us the Halcyon, then,” Burchfield said. “That’s an order, in the name o f national security.”

“These people need it,” Mark said, waving at Alexis, David, and Anita. “We don’t know how long the Seethe will last.”

“Just one pill,” Burchfield said, glancing around the floor to see if Alexis had missed any. “We can analyze it.”

“A drop of the devil’s blood is enough to pollute the whole ocean, Daniel,” Forsyth said. “Nobody should have to see what I saw in my head.”

“If there’s a hell, that’s the only place it could exist,” Alexis said.

Mark was relieved to hear her sounding like her old self. Hopefully, there would be no permanent damage.

Still, she was capable of murder. Whether that was an instinct, or a deep, essential part of her personality, was for the shrinks to decide. Or maybe God.

“Here’s the deal, Senator. You pull strings and get all this covered up.” Mark nodded at Anita and David. “They take the Halcyon as long as they need it. And when my wife is confident they’re all normal again, you get what’s left.”

Mark had no intention of letting anyone have those pills. Not the government, not CRO, not Forsyth, not even his wife. No one could be trusted with the power to change people’s minds. There was no “better living with chemistry,” only the lying and the dying.

“All right,” Burchfield said, somewhat wary but probably recognizing he had little bargaining power besides brute force, and his hired muscle was currently a cold, stiffening corpse. “We’ve got four dead. An industrial accident with limited exposure should work. CRO will have to sacrifice the property, though, because we’ll have to turn it into an EPA brownfield site.”

“Why should we believe you?” Alexis said. “What if you called in the CIA and had then search for the formulas? What if this stuff is too addictive and you find you can’t resist?”

Burchfield glanced over the damaged monitors and equipment as if measuring the evidence that might implicate him in the conspiracy. “Things happened here that are best forgotten. I have my enemies, too. We’re all in the same lifeboat on this.”

“Fine,” Mark said. CRO’s board of directors would squeal, but given the possible collateral damage, they would hold their tongues and take it. Not that Mark gave a damn. He was finished with CRO, one way or another.

“She killed Susan,” David said, his mind apparently stuck on one track.

Anita stroked his hair and began singing in a soft, angelic voice. “Home…home on the range…where the deer and the antelope play…”

David joined in, wailing in his atonal style, but he was smiling.

Fuck, Mark thought. So that’s the bottom on Seethe and Halcyon.

An elevator that goes up and down until the cables snap.

I hope you don’t get there, Lex.

He kissed her. “Better get you to a doctor.”

“Your face is a mess,” she said. “That tooth looks like it hurts.”

“Yeah,” he said. “The things you do for love.”

She touched his face, and she was placid, gorgeous, determined, the same woman he’d married. She must have already forgotten the worst. “And I’d do anything for you.”

“I believe it.”

She nodded. “I wonder how Roland’s doing.”

“He seems like he can take of himself.”

“He’s Seething, honey. All bets are off.”

“Yeah.” He himself was married to a lunatic serial killer. The odds were lousy, but he was all in.