Altar Of Eden

Chapter 23

Lorna stood on her front porch. Sunrise was only a couple of hours away. She should be bone-tired, but the opposite was true. She was wired, still running on adrenaline from all that had happened during the night.

A step below her, Jack waited.

He had driven her from the New Orleans Border Patrol station, where she’d finished giving a statement. The campers were all safe, treated for some minor burns and smoke inhalation. The boy seized by the jaguar had been evacuated by a Life Flight air ambulance, as had Garland Chase. The man had lost a lot of blood, along with most of his left leg to the alligator, but he’d live.

The Coast Guard had wanted to shoot the gator, but Lorna had argued against it, explaining how the gunshots and fire had riled the beast, causing it to lash out with a million years of defensive instinct. The farm owner’s daughter-the one who dove in and rescued Garland -looked ready to throw herself between the Coast Guard sharpshooter and the gator.

In the end, Elvis lived.

Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said about the jaguar and her cub. Their carcasses were airlifted to ACRES. The animals’ deaths were a tragic loss, but Lorna had also watched three men’s bodies hauled out of the forest, their skulls crushed, their throats ripped out. The cat was a man-eater, a remorseless killing machine, too dangerous to be allowed to live.

Still, not all of the aftermath was tragic. The pilot of the crashed helicopter had survived, found in the wreckage with a broken arm and collarbone. Likewise, a lone pirogue had paddled into the park, appearing on the opposite side of the farm. The Thibodeaux brothers- thought lost to the cat-had survived their encounter, along with Jack’s two teammates. T-Bob had had enough swamp savvy to abandon the canoe and retreat his group up a pair of tall cypresses. From the high vantage point and hidden from the cat, he’d taken potshots to drive her off.

Lorna pictured the mother’s limp bulk rising into the air, hauled aloft in a cargo net. She was anxious to get back to ACRES, but Jack had insisted she fly with him back to New Orleans aboard a Coast Guard chopper to give a statement. Afterward, he offered to drive her home, then to the docks to retrieve her Bronco. She wanted to grab a change of clothes and head directly out to ACRES.

“I’ll wait here,” Jack said from the porch step.

He stood in his undershirt. His uniform top had been shredded and bloodied by the cub’s frenzy. His left arm was bandaged from wrist to elbow.

“Don’t be stupid. Come inside.” She nodded to his arm. “You’re already seeping through your gauze. I’ve got a first-aid kit inside. I’ll put on a fresh wrap before we head out. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

He tried to hide his injured arm. “I’ll be fine.”

“Cat bites and scratches shouldn’t be taken lightly,” she warned, and she certainly had the scars on her arms to prove it. “Did they give you any antibiotics?”

“A prescription. I’ll pick it up in the morning.”

She rolled her eyes. Clearly the Coast Guard medical team knew nothing about feline injuries-but then why would they? There weren’t a lot of feral cats on the high seas.

“Are you allergic to penicillin?” she asked and turned to the front door with her keys.

“No.”

“Cats carry a form of Pasteurella in their mouths, a toxic and septic bacterium. I’ve seen animal health technicians lose fingers and parts of hands from neglected bite wounds. Antibiotics must be started immediately. I have some Augmentin inside. I always keep a supply in case I need to self-medicate.“ She glanced back to Jack. ”But you didn’t hear that from me.”

He finally relented and climbed the last step to the porch. She tugged open the door, flicked on the light inside, and led him into the foyer.

“The kitchen’s in back.” She pointed. “I’ll grab my kit and meet you there.”

She climbed the stairs to the upper landing, taking the steps two at a time. Her abraded back protested, but she didn’t slow. Definitely wired. She retreated to the hall bathroom and opened the medicine chest. Rows of prescription pill bottles lined the shelves, along with various toiletries and sundries. She grabbed the bottle of Augmentin and shook it. Plenty still left. She also snatched a fresh roll of gauze, hydrogen peroxide, and iodine.

As she closed the medicine chest she caught her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was a scraggly mess, half plastered to her skull. Her clothes had fared even worse. She wasn’t a vain woman, but there were limits even for her. She abandoned the medical kit into the sink and turned to the tub. She twisted on the shower, waited for the steam to rise, then climbed in fully clothed. She let the water run over her for a full half minute. With her eyes still closed, she stripped to the skin, let the blistering-hot water scald over her, then finally climbed back out and toweled off.

In another few minutes, her hair was brushed loose to her shoulders and she’d hurried to her room naked and changed into a fresh pair of jeans and white tank top. Retrieving the medical kit, she headed downstairs.

She found Jack sitting at the kitchen table, his back to her. His head was hanging, half drowsing from his posture. She hated to disturb him and paused in the doorway.

For just a moment she flashed back on Tom. As she caught Jack in half silhouette, the family resemblance was uncanny. Relaxed with his guard down, Jack looked ten years younger. She could see the boy hidden behind the hardness of the man, almost a ghost of his younger brother.

He must have heard or sensed her presence. His head jerked up and toward her, his face going stony again. Still, his Cajun accent drawled softly, huskily.

“Lorna…”

The one word flushed goose bumps along her arms. His gaze traveled sleepily up and down her body, taking in her new clothes. If not so exhausted, he might not have been so brazen about it. Under his raw gaze, a warmth traveled deep into her belly and settled there.

Discomfited, she hurried to the table and dumped the medical supplies down, then crossed to the sink to get a glass of water for him to take with the antibiotics. She was glad to have her back to him as she turned on the tap.

Get ahold of yourself already…

Glass in hand, she turned back around. “Better take two pills. Then let me check that arm.”

As he shook out the pills into his palm, she pulled up a chair and laid out the fresh gauze and a bottle of Betadine. He craned back to swallow the antibiotics. She noted the pinpricks of blood that stained his undershirt.

“Did anyone treat the wounds on your chest?” she asked.

“They’re just scratches.”

Annoyance burned away the residual discomfort of his close presence.

“Take off your shirt,” she said.

“They’re nothing.”

She waved at him. “Don’t argue.”

He gave her a tired sheepish look, then, in one pull, shed his shirt. His bare chest and belly were crisscrossed with shallow scratches. The movement and pull of cloth set a few to bleeding again. No one had bothered to clean them.

She sighed. “There’s a full bath with a shower off the sleeping porch in back. I want you to take hot water and soap to any and every wound from that cub.”

“We don’t have time-”

“Doctor’s orders.” She stood up. “There are clean towels in there. I’ll get you a fresh shirt. My brother’s about your size.”

He looked ready to argue, but she pointed her arm.

“Go. I’ll make a fresh batch of coffee and warm some leftover beignets.”

That seemed to satisfy him, and he headed off toward the bathroom.

She pulled out a teakettle and a French press to make coffee. As the water heated she picked up the phone and punched in the number for ACRES. She called the genetics lab, figuring someone was still there.

The line picked up. The voice spoke in an impatient rush. “Dr. Trent here.”

“Zoë, it’s Lorna.”

In the background, she heard the neurobiologist’s husband, Paul, talking animatedly about RNA transcription errors. She also recognized Dr. Metoyer’s muffled voice but couldn’t make out his words. None of them had left. They were pulling an all-nighter, too.

“I was just checking in,” Lorna said.

“Then you’d better stop checking, chica, and get that butt of yours over here! You’re missing all the fun. And I can use a little estrogen here.”

She smiled at her colleague’s excitement. “Had to pick up a few things from home. I should be there in the next hour. Is the DNA analysis finished?”

Zoë’s voice grew more serious. “Not yet. Should be done by the time you get here. But the MRI data finished compiling. The results showed some strange neurological anomalies.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s too much to go over on the phone. Oh, and just so you’re prepared, about an hour ago we performed a series of EEGs on your animals.”

Electroencephalograms?

“What? Why?” Irritation dulled her initial excitement. Lorna felt protective of the recovered animals. They had been traumatized enough. “Any live testing should have waited until I was on the premises. You all know that.”

“I know, I know. But the procedure was noninvasive. We’ll explain it all when you get here.”

“I’ll be right over.” She hung up the phone, knowing her last words sounded as much a threat as a promise.

The teakettle whistled for her attention. She packed the French press with a chicory blend from Cafe du Monde and allowed the simple routine to resettle her thoughts.

Down the hall, she heard the bathroom door pop open. Jack returned with his hair wet and his skin almost steaming. He came in barefoot, wearing only his work trousers and a towel over one shoulder.

“I heard talking as I was drying off. Everything okay?”

“Will be once I get over to ACRES. Something’s got them all worked up.”

Jack nodded to the table. “Then this can wait. I can take care of all of this after I drop you off-”

“Sit.” She pointed a cup of hot coffee toward the table. “Sugar? Cream?”

“Black will do.” He sank reluctantly back into his seat.

Lorna checked the scratches and bite wounds, satisfied that he’d scrubbed them clean. “This’ll sting.”

She painted the marks with Betadine, noting his skin flinch with each touch, but the deeper underlying muscle never moved and his breathing never changed its steady rhythm. She felt an impulse to press her ear to his chest, to listen to his heart, to monitor that rhythm, too, but she restrained herself.

The only other reaction from his body was a flush along his neckline and a hardening of his abdominals, as if he were preparing to take a blow to the stomach. She suspected it wasn’t all from the pain. Confirming this, he shifted self-consciously.

As she worked in silence, she noted several old ropy scars across his left shoulder, neck, and down his back. Without meaning to, she allowed one finger to lightly trace one of the scars.

“Shrapnel from an IED,” he explained matter-of-factly. “A roadside bomb.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean…” Her hand dropped away, and her face heated with embarrassment.

She finished her ministrations and replaced the bandage on his arm.

When she glanced up, she found him staring her full in the face. His eyes were like a wolf, raw and unreadable. He leaned closer. For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her, but instead he reached to the cup of coffee on the table.

“Thanks.” He stood up. “You said something about a new shirt.”

“That’s right,” she stammered out, feeling stupid for forgetting- and for stammering. “I’ll get one from my brother’s room.”

She was happy to flee the room. She wiped her damp hands on her jeans. She blamed the fine sheen of perspiration over her body on the night’s humidity. Or maybe it was just the exhaustion, weakening her guard. Or maybe it was the boy she’d noted in the slumbering man. An echo of Tom, of long nights in each other’s arms.

She might have forgotten, but her body had not.

She dragged a clean T-shirt from her brother’s dresser and hurried back to the hallway where Jack waited. He tugged into the shirt. She was wrong about Jack being the same size as her brother. The shirt was a tight fit and clung to his shoulders and chest.

“Ready?” he asked as he shoved into his socks and boots.

She nodded and pulled open the front door, glad for the cool night breeze on her heated face.

Out of the shadows in the front yard, a hard shout called to her.

“Where the hell do you think you’re all going?”

Chapter 24

At the shout, Jack pulled Lorna behind him, an instinctual reaction. He crouched, feeling exposed under the porch lamp, blinded by its glare. Towering oaks and bushy magnolias shadowed the dark walkway. Movement drew his eye below. A figure stalked up from the front gate.

Lorna stepped back into view. “Kyle? What are you doing back? I thought you were stuck on that oil rig for another four days.” Lorna turned to Jack and explained under her breath. “My brother.”

“I told you on the phone I was coming back early.”

“And I told you that wasn’t necessary.”

“Well, I wasn’t about to let you go hunting in the swamps by yourself. And it looks like I got here just in time.”

The figure climbed the steps and into the porch light. Jack sized him up. Lorna’s brother had the same sandy blond hair as his sister- in his case cropped short on the sides and longer on the top. From the looks of it, he hadn’t shaved in days and had worn the same cargo shorts and loose polo shirt for just as long. He had a wiry physique, like a coiled spring-though at the moment wound a bit too tightly. As the kid gripped the porch rail, Jack noted that his fingernail beds and the wrinkles of his knuckles were black with ground-in oil. The only thing darker was the kid’s demeanor as he eyed Jack with a hard suspicion.

“I told you not to come,” Lorna said. “The hunt’s already over. You came all the way back here for nothing.”

“Then where are you two going?” Kyle stood a step below, blocking the way.

“Over to ACRES.”

“Both of you?”

Lorna glanced to Jack. “No. He was just taking me over to fetch the Bronco. It’s over by the dock near the zoo.”

Jack cleared his throat. “Or I could take you directly to your lab. Be faster, and I wouldn’t mind hearing firsthand what your colleagues have figured out about those animals. Might be important to the investigation.”

Lorna nodded. “I’d like… I mean, that would be fine.”

Kyle narrowed one eye and studied him. “You’re Jack Menard, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

Kyle turned back to his sister. “Then I’m going with you.”

“Don’t be stupid. Get some sleep.”

“If he’s going”-Kyle stabbed a finger at Jack-“then I’m going. Someone needs to chaperone this date.”

“It’s not a date.” Lorna’s face flushed, more angry than embarrassed. “I can damn well take care of myself.”

“What? Like the last time you took off with one of the Menard brothers?”

Lorna’s eyes widened, shocked by his words, struck dumb. Jack had to restrain an urge to slam a fist in the kid’s face.

Kyle seemed to recognize he’d overstepped himself and back-pedaled. “Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”

He hurriedly climbed the last step and joined his sister, as if shortening the distance could temper his words. He touched her arm, but she turned away. He followed, matching her step for step.

“After what those Menards put you through,” Kyle said more softly as his anger bled away to raw concern. “I don’t want you hurt again. That’s all I was saying. I’d cut off my right arm to protect you. You know that.”

She sagged under his assault. “Of course I know that, Kyle. But in this case, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” She glanced over at Jack. “I trust him.”

Something in her face more than her words steeled through Jack. He found himself standing a bit straighter. At the same time he remembered her fingers on his skin, warm and soft.

Kyle looked between the two of them, then shook his head. “I’d still like to go with you. I won’t get any sleep till you’re home anyway.” His tone was more conciliatory and plainly worked better on Lorna. “And I promise I won’t cause any trouble.”

“Fine. But we’re leaving right now.”

“That’s okay by me.”

He stepped aside, and Lorna led the way back to the street. Kyle kept pace next to Jack. Though the kid had taken a more mollifying tone with his older sister, Jack read the continuing suspicion in his glance as they headed out. Kyle was clearly keeping his guard up-and Jack respected that. Lorna’s brother only wanted to protect her and didn’t care whose feathers he ruffled.

They all piled into the service truck and headed out. Jack placed a quick call to his own brother about the change in plans. Randy still had Burt and had been waiting at the station for them to head back home together.

“Then I’ll just meet you at that zoo place,” Randy said and hung up before Jack could argue.

Lowering the phone, Jack glanced sidelong at his passenger. Lorna shared the front seat with him. He could tell she was lost elsewhere. Her eyes had crinkled at the corners, her mind already working on the mysteries surrounding this case, the woman becoming the doctor again.

Kyle leaned forward, intruding between them. “So what’s up with these damned animals anyway? What’s so special about them?”

Lorna muttered, still lost to the moment, “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

Chapter 25

An hour later, Lorna sat before a thirty-inch wide-screen LCD computer monitor in the genetics suite. Multiple windows were open on the screen, but she studied the one in the center. A three-dimensional image of an avian brain rotated on the screen, compiled from the Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan done on the African Grey parrot named Igor. A neighboring window showed a photo of the reptilian-looking featherless bird.

“What are we looking at?” Jack asked behind her.

Zoë Trent answered him, standing on her other side. “Something remarkable.”

The neurobiologist shared the small conference room with them off the main lab. Her husband, Paul, was still out there reviewing the DNA analysis on the aberrant chromosome.

“What’s wrong with this bird?” Kyle asked.

Her brother sat on a stool beside the small birdcage that held Igor. The parrot sat sullenly, hunched low to the perch. The bird was nothing like the bright and attentive fellow he had been earlier. Also watery droppings covered the bottom of his cage.

Diarrhea due to stress.

A knot of annoyance burned in Lorna’s gut. Her colleagues should have waited until she returned to perform those extra tests. The health and well-being of the facility’s animals were her responsibility. And that duty extended to the animals rescued from the trawler. The creatures had already been through enough. They didn’t deserve to be treated like guinea pigs here, too.

“How come this ugly guy doesn’t have any feathers?” her brother asked.

Lorna answered without taking her eyes off the screen. “First, he’s not ugly. Second, we think it’s a genetic throwback, a lost trait that’s surfaced again.”

“Weird.”

She didn’t argue with that. It was weird. Everything about this was strange. “Just keep him company. He’s spooked. Talk to him.”

Parrots were social creatures and found solace in companionship.

Kyle shrugged and leaned closer to the cage. Her brother lowered his voice to a gentle coo. “So who’s an ugly bird? Not you.”

Igor cocked an eye quizzically at Kyle and responded with a soft clucking, the avian equivalent of a chuckle.

Like Lorna, her brother always had a way with animals. And despite his quick temper, he had a big heart, which might explain his volatility. He felt things deeply, and she knew how much he loved her, sought to protect her. With their father passing away when they were children, he had always taken on the role of the man of the house-and even more so after their mother had died. She both loved him for this effort and bristled against it, but in the machismo world of the South, it was an all-too-common family dynamic.

Jack drew her attention back to the computer. He leaned a hip on the desk. “So what’s so remarkable about this MRI scan?” he asked Zoë. “Why insist Lorna see this first?”

The neurobiologist pointed to the monitor. “It’ll help explain why we didn’t wait before performing the electroencephalograms.” Her voice took on an apologetic tone, but it didn’t appease Lorna.

She studied the rotating image. The brain looked like most birds’, and in fact it was not that much different from a mammalian brain. On the screen, the spinal cord bloomed into a medulla, a cerebellum, and a cerebrum that was divided into two hemispheres. She noted something strange almost immediately: five distinct darker objects appeared to be embedded between the hyperpallium and mesopallium layers of forebrain, the avian equivalent to the human neocortex. They were crisp and hard-edged, appearing almost crystalline in structure.

She rotated to get a top view of these odd densities. The five formed a perfect pentagram within the neurological tissue.

“What are they?” she asked.

Instead of answering, Zoë reached and tapped a button on the keyboard. The parrot’s brain vanished and was replaced by another. “This is the brain from one of the capuchin monkeys.”

Lorna pictured the conjoined twins as she leaned closer to the screen. The same strange densities were lodged within the brain tissue of the monkey. She revolved the image. The same number and lodged in the equivalent morphological locations. Even the pattern was the same. A perfectly symmetrical pentagram.

Despite the warmth of the room, a chill edged through her.

Zoë shifted closer. “We found these same odd intrusions in all the animals recovered from the trawler. I can show you the other scans.”

Lorna shook her head, trusting her colleagues’ assessment. “Are they implants?”

“We don’t think so.” Excitement welled in the neurobiologist’s voice. “We think they might be natural features.”

“Natural?”

“That’s right.” Zoë shifted the computer mouse to zoom down on one of the densities. “Look closer. See how there’s no scarring around the intrusions like you’d expect from a surgical implant. Also there’s no granulation tissue walled around it like you’d see from an embedded foreign body.”

“Then what are they?”

Zoë shrugged. “That’s what Dr. Metoyer wants to know. Jon Greer over in pathology is attempting to dissect one from the dead cub’s carcass so we can study it. He’s also taking multiple brain biopsies around the intrusion.”

“Biopsies?” Jack asked. “Why?”

Zoë circled a finger around the abnormalities on the computer screen. “The neurological tissue appears to be denser within the zone of the intrusions. Dr. Metoyer wanted to confirm a supposition that this region is made up of more densely packed neurons.”

Lorna wanted to know, too. She remembered the glow from the jaguar’s eyes, its cunningness. Even the parrot’s ability to recite the mathematical equivalent of pi. More neurons translated to a richer synaptic environment, which meant more computing power to be tapped. This discovery could explain why the animals seemed especially hyper-intelligent.

Zoë straightened and ran a hand through her short black hair. “Now you know why we wanted to perform those EEGs. We were so excited. We couldn’t wait.”

Lorna slowly nodded. By studying the electrical patterns of the brain, they were looking for any change in functionality associated with these intrusions. “What did you find with the EEGs?”

“At first nothing. Each animal’s brain-wave patterns seemed normal enough, each as unique as a fingerprint. There seemed to be no common ground.”

Rather than disappointment, Zoë’s face shone with amazement. Lorna knew there was another shoe still to drop. Zoë glanced over to Igor’s cage.

Lorna followed her gaze, then back to the neurobiologist. “What?”

“I’ll show you.” Zoë sidled next to her and tapped rapidly at the keyboard. “I’m going to display the set of four EEGs we took from the parrot, the two monkeys, and Bagheera, the cub. For simplicity’s sake, I’m only going to show a single lead from each animal.”

The readings appeared on the screen.

Zoë glanced over to Lorna with one eyebrow cocked. She read her colleague’s question. Can you see anything weird here?

It took Lorna only a second. She pointed to the two center tracings. “These two runs are nearly identical.” She read the labels and scrunched her brow. Cebus apella. Specimens A and B. “Those readings came from the conjoined twin monkeys.”

Zoë nodded. “That’s right. At first we thought it might be a mistake. Perhaps the electrode net placed on one monkey was picking up the electrical pattern from its twin. Or maybe because they were genetic twins, their brain activity also matched. Just to be sure we brought all the animals up here and retested them.”

She tapped at the keyboard and another four leads were displayed. “This is what we got when all four specimens were in the room at the same time.”

Lorna leaned closer, running each lead with the tip of a finger. Amazement grew. Impossible.

Jack spoke next to her. “They all look roughly the same.”

“We ran the leads for a full ten minutes each. They continued to stay synchronized.”

Lorna struggled to comprehend what she was seeing.

“Afterward,” Zoë said, “we took the other animals back to their ward. Except for the parrot here. We tested Igor again with the others gone. His EEG returned to its original unique pattern.”

Lorna stared over to the parrot and her brother. “Are you saying that when they’re all together, their brain-wave patterns somehow slip into perfect synchronization?”

“That’s what seems to be happening.”

How could that be? She had heard of women in dorms who would begin to menstruate in unison when housed together-but that was due to pheromones in the air, triggering a synchronized cycling. What could be causing the neurological equivalent in these animals? If this data were correct, there had to be some sort of stimulus or communication among the animals.

Lorna pulled up the MRI data on the monitor. Again the three-dimensional model of Igor’s brain appeared. She rotated it to look down upon the five strange densities.

“Whatever’s going on has to be tied to these intrusions,” Lorna said. “All the specimens share this common structure.”

She stared at the screen, picturing the net of denser tissue that spanned the pentagram. It reminded her of something. But what? She cupped out her hand, splaying her five fingers wide. Then it dawned on her. She rotated her hand back and forth.

“A satellite dish,” she mumbled.

“What?” Zoë asked.

“The structure in the animal’s brain. What if it’s acting like a small transmitting dish? Emitting an ultralow frequency signal that the others pick up and somehow triggers this synchronization.”

Zoë frowned, caught between disbelief and possibility.

“Are you talking about some form of telepathy?” Kyle asked, eye-balling the parrot with suspicion.

“No.” Lorna spoke faster. “At least not exactly. For the EEGs to match, something has to be triggering it. It can’t be hormonal or pheromonal. They’re different species.”

“Plus the reaction time is too fast,” Zoë added, her disbelief fading.

Lorna nodded. “But a weak electrical signal could trigger it. Just enough to flip a switch in the brains of all four animals.”

“But what could be powering it all?” Jack asked. “I don’t see any battery.”

Zoë answered him. “No battery is needed. The brain’s an electrical organ, producing energy known as action potentials by pumping chemicals into and out of neurons. The average brain produces a continuous ten to twelve watts of electricity. Morning, noon, and night. Enough to power a flashlight.”

“And certainly enough to transmit a low-grade signal.” Lorna stared at the MRI model and swallowed.

A new voice spoke by the doorway. “Which, of course, begs another question, my dear.”

Lorna turned to find her boss, Carlton Metoyer, leaning in the doorway. How long had he been listening in on their conversation?

“What question is that?” Zoë asked.

He stepped into the room, wearing a crisply pressed lab jacket, ever the southern gentleman, even when up all night. “Dr. Polk has just offered us an intriguing solution as to how these brains are linking up. Which raises an even more dynamic question.”

Lorna understood and asked that question aloud. “Why?”

Why were these animals linking up?

Chapter 26

Duncan sat alone in a truck parked outside the entry road to ACRES. He had the window rolled down and listened to the nighttime chorus of frogs and crickets. Off to the left, the Mississippi River whispered muddily as it swept alongside the levee road. A soft wind stirred the thick humid air, making it almost breathable.

With his night-vision scope fixed to his face, he studied the facility on the far side of the levee. The place was dark, except for a few lighted windows on the first floor. His earpiece registered the call signs of his team as they reached their various positions around the building. While waiting, Duncan kept watch on the one road into and out of the facility.

He didn’t want any surprises.

His second-in-command finally reported the all-ready. “On your signal.”

“Have you confirmed the number and identity of the civilians?”

“Seven. One is a Border Patrol agent, and we should assume he’s armed.”

“Make him a high-priority target. Remember, we need one of the scientists to interrogate off-site.”

“Understood, sir.”

They needed to gauge how much the researchers had learned about the Babylon Project-and more important, if any word had spread. After that, the subject would be eliminated and the body disposed of. There were plenty of hungry sharks in the Caribbean.

Duncan studied the facility one last time. His team had the place surrounded and locked down. Incendiary charges would cover their tracks afterward. At first light, an animal rights terrorist group would e-mail and claim responsibility for the attack. Nothing would be traced back to Ironcreek Industries.

With everything ready, he lifted the radio to give the order to move in-when suddenly lights flared behind his truck. The flash stung through his night-vision scopes. He tore off the goggles and glanced to the rearview mirror.

A truck rumbled around a far bend in the river road. Its headlights swept around the corner and speared Duncan’s parked truck. He lowered his radio and waited.

Suspicion rankled through him.

At this hour and in these remote parts, he had not expected any traffic.

While he watched the vehicle approach he popped another Life Savers in his mouth. Pineapple. He grimaced at the flavor. Not his favorite. Still, he sucked on the candy. As he waited he judged the threat level and recalibrated his plans.

Once the truck was close enough, he saw that it appeared to be a beat-up Chevy, held together mostly with rust and old gray primer. It sidled toward his position.

Keep moving he willed it.

As if obeying him, the Chevy swung wide, preparing to pass around, but a flare of crimson bloomed from the rear as the truck began to brake. The vehicle slowed and settled to a stop beside Duncan’s truck with a wheezy sigh of its engine. The driver leaned toward the open passenger window and pushed up the brim of a ball cap. He wore a hunting vest over a stained T-shirt.

“Need a hand, buddy?” he called out. His accent was thickly Cajun, just a swamp rat out late.

Duncan shifted the pistol on his lap and inwardly grimaced.

The jackass just had to stop…

Duncan tilted toward the window. The driver flinched at the sight of his scarred face, one not easy to forget. There could be no witnesses. He lifted his gun to the window-

– but a black-and-tan hound suddenly lunged up from the truck’s rear bed. It bayed loudly at him, like an angry bullhorn.

Startled, Duncan jerked back with a strangled gasp. Old terror crackled through his ribs. He flashed back to another time a beast had caught him by surprise.

The driver turned and hollered at the dog. “Burt, shut your piehole! I can hardly hear myself think.”

Duncan’s heart pounded in his throat.

Oblivious of his reaction, the driver swung back toward him. “Mister, you don’t happen to know if there’s some zoo place out here, do ya? My fool of a brother was heading over-”

Terror turned to fury. Angered at being caught off guard, Duncan yanked up his pistol and thrust it through the window. As he pulled the trigger the dog launched out of the truck straight at him.

He flinched as the gun went off. Blood splattered against the other windshield. The driver grabbed the side of his head, yelling a loud “Fuck!,” and dropped out of view.

Duncan swung toward the attacking dog, but the hound twisted in midair, struck the side of his truck, and fell between the two vehicles.

Across the way, the Chevy’s engine suddenly revved and gears popped. The truck bounced away, careening wildly back and forth as the driver drove blindly from his hiding place.

Duncan shoved the door open, leaped out into a shooter’s stance, and emptied his entire clip at the truck. The Chevy veered sharply to the left, not slowing down. It leaped off the levee road and went airborne over the steep edge.

He ran after it while ejecting the dead clip and slapping a fresh one into his pistol. He watched the truck’s front end hit the stony embankment below and flip upside down into the storm-swollen Mississippi River. The current spun the vehicle as it quickly sank.

Duncan kept watch, gun pointed. He waited a full two minutes. No body came thrashing to the surface.

Screw it.

With no time for a more thorough search, he swung away. Even if the man survived, Duncan’s team would be long gone before the bastard could alert anyone.

Red-faced, with his heart still thudding, he returned to his truck. He watched for any sign of the dog, but the hound must have high-tailed it away. At the truck, he grabbed his radio off the front seat. He was done here. He lifted the radio to his lips.

“All positions. Move in. Take this place down.”

Chapter 27

“Igor, tell me what pi is,” Lorna said as she leaned by the birdcage, taking Kyle’s place. “What is pi?”

The others gathered behind her. The parrot stared at her with one eye, then the other. Following her brother’s gentle attention, Igor had straightened out of his sullen hunch. But there remained also a dullness to his gaze unlike his earlier verve.

Carlton stood at her elbow. “Lorna, what are you doing?”

“Testing something.” She waved her boss back. “Everybody clear away.”

As they retreated she moved closer, lowering her voice to a soft, soothing whisper. “C’mon, Igor…”

“Igor,” the bird mimicked tentatively.

“Good, Igor. Who’s a good bird?”

“Igor!” he squawked more brightly, and hopped from foot to foot on the perch.

“Good boy. Now tell me what pi is. You’ve done it before. Pi.”

On the computer nearby, Lorna had pulled up a full page of the mathematical constant: 3.141592653589793…

The parrot bobbed his head. “Three…”

“That’s right. Good, Igor.”

“One… four…”

He was doing it again, but then things began to fall apart.

“Eight… seven… round… triangle…”

Igor cocked his head almost upside down, eyes squinted to slits, as if struggling to remember.

“Lorna?” Carlton pressed. He glanced at his wristwatch, losing patience.

She turned. Instead of being disappointed by Igor’s poor performance, she grew more assured. Still, she wanted to confirm her hypothesis. “Zoë, would you mind running down and fetching Bagheera? And, Paul, can you bring up the capuchins?”

The two neurobiologists nodded and rushed off.

Lorna faced Carlton. “Earlier-both at the trawler and down in the ward-Igor was able to recite pi to hundreds of digits. Back then I didn’t have time to double-check his recitation, but the bird was correct to at least a dozen digits.”

“I remember that, too,” Jack said, supporting her.

Carlton shrugged. “I don’t understand. It’s simple mimicry, is it not? Nothing more. What are you trying to prove?”

“I think it’s more than mimicry. You posited the question why these animals seem to be synchronizing their brain waves. I think I might have the answer.”

She noted Jack staring at her. She took strength in the intensity of his interest and attention. But what if she was wrong?

A few moments later, Zoë and Paul returned with charges in hand. Zoë carried Bagheera like a baby in a blanket. The cat stared out at them with bright blue eyes. The two monkeys clutched to Paul’s lab coat with both hands and feet. He gently cradled them under an arm, while wearing a goofy smile, like a proud papa.

Lorna asked Carlton, “Once the animals were brought together, how long did it take for this synchronization to occur?”

“I’d say a matter of seconds. Half minute at most.”

Satisfied, Lorna turned back to the birdcage. Let’s try this again.

“Igor, what is pi?”

The bird’s posture had gone straight again, fully attentive, his eyes brighter, staring hard at Lorna.

“What is pi?” she repeated.

Igor flashed his pupils at Lorna and began a recitation with that eerily human voice. This time there was no hesitation. “Three, one, four, one, five, nine, two, six, five…”

Kyle, seated by the computer, followed on the screen. Her brother’s eyes got huge. “By golly, he’s right.”

As Igor continued to recite the numbers his eyes drifted closed- not with squinted concentration, but more like contentment. “… three, five, eight, nine, seven, nine, three…”

Everyone remained silent. Lorna’s boss drifted closer to Kyle and followed along on the screen.

Igor performed for a full three minutes, passing beyond the hundreds of numbers displayed on the screen.

Lorna watched Carlton’s face shift from skepticism to awe. He finally took off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief. He shook his head. “I concede. His memory is amazing.”

“I’m not sure it is memory,” Lorna said as Igor continued. “I think he’s actively calculating it.”

Carlton looked ready again to scoff-then something seemed to dawn in his eyes. “You’re thinking… the synchronization… that it goes beyond physicality and into functionality!”

She smiled and nodded.

“What’s that mean?” Kyle asked.

Zoë moved closer. She stared down at the cub in her arms. “Then they’re not just linking up to synchronize-”

Her husband finished her thought. “-they’re networking together at the functional level.”

Kyle shrugged heavily, still not understanding. Jack also moved closer to Lorna, wanting to know more.

She explained. “A brain is really an organic computer. And most of the time its vast network of neurons and synapses are inactive, a large resource of untapped computing power. I think the transmission dish-the one inside their heads-is functioning as a network router, linking the computing power in each animal’s brain. Each one has full access to tap into the dormant resources of the others’ organic computer. Basically these animals are forming a crude computer network, linked wirelessly.”

“But how can that be?” Jack asked.

Before anyone could answer, the buzz of a cell phone interrupted the discussion. Carlton gave an apologetic look and answered it. He listened for a moment, then said, “Thank you, Jon. We’ll be right down.”

Lorna’s boss closed his phone and faced Jack.

“It seems our resident pathologist might have an answer to your question, Agent Menard.”

JACK HAD EXPERIENCED his share of dead bodies, but there was something particularly macabre about the pathology suite at ACRES. The windowless room was as large as a basketball court. Drains and floor traps crisscrossed an expanse of cement floor. Huge stainless-steel tables lined the center of the room lit by surgical lamps. Overhead ran a pulley-and-chain system for moving the carcasses of large animals into and out of the place. The air reeked of formaldehyde and an underlying hint of decay.

On the whole, the space had a feel of a giant slaughterhouse.

The promise of answers from the facility’s pathologist had drawn everyone down here.

Off to one side, the intact carcass of the female jaguar covered one table, but they all gathered by another. It held the dissected remains of the young cub. The tiny body was splayed out like a frog. Its cavities had been hollowed out. Parts floating in labeled jars: heart, kidney, spleen, liver. But the most gruesome sight was the cranial cavity: sawed open and empty.

The brain rested on an instrument tray at the head of the table. The organ’s gray surface glistened moistly under the halogen lamps.

Jack noted Lorna staring at the hollowed-out carcass. The violation and needless loss of life clearly troubled her, but the pathologist drew her attention.

Dr. Jon Greer waved everyone closer with a thumb forceps. “I thought you should see this in person.”

Jack did not necessarily appreciate this consideration, but he kept quiet.

Using the forceps and the edge of a scalpel, the pathologist peeled back the top layer of the brain and exposed a deeper layer of the cerebrum. The tissue looked much like the rest of the organ, except for what appeared to be four tiny black diamonds reflecting the light. The indentation for a fifth marked the firm flesh.

“I teased out one of the inclusion bodies and did a couple of quick tests. Let me show you.”

He moved to a neighboring table. On a plastic tray rested one of the black diamonds, only this one had been sectioned into four pieces. Greer used tweezers to pick up a shard. He moved it over to a pile of material that looked like coarse ground pepper.

“Iron filings,” the pathologist explained.

As the shard passed over the pile, a few metallic granules leaped and clung to the sliver.

Greer glanced to the others. “I believe what we’re dealing with- what’s lodged in these brains-are dense aggregates of magnetite crystals.”

“Magnetite?” Jack asked. No one else looked particularly surprised. Lorna’s brother merely looked ill and like he’d rather be anywhere but here. “Like magnets?”

“Sort of,” Lorna said.

Zoë explained. “All brain tissue, including our own, has magnetite crystals laced naturally throughout it. Crystal accumulations can be found in the cerebral cortex, the cerebellum, even the meningeal layers that cover the brain.”

Lorna nodded. “The magnetite levels in avian brains are even higher. It’s believed that these magnetic crystals are one of the ways that birds orient themselves to the earth’s magnetic field during migrations. It’s how they get to where they’re going each year without getting lost. It’s also found in bees, fish, bacteria, and other organisms that navigate by internal compass.”

“Then why do we have it in our brains?” Jack asked.

Lorna shrugged. “No one knows.”

“But there are theories,” Zoë interjected. “Newest research suggests that biomagnetism may be the foundation for life on this planet. That magnetism is the true bridge between energy and living matter. For example, piezoelectric matrices can be found in proteins, enzymes, even DNA. Basically all the building blocks of life.”

Lorna lifted an arm and cut her off. “Okay, now you’re losing even me.”

“Regardless of all that,” Greer interrupted, “we’ve never seen this level of magnetite in any animal. Nor such precise symmetry and pattern of deposition. I took the liberty of examining the inclusion under a dissecting microscope. The structure is composed of smaller and smaller crystals, breaking down into tinier and tinier identical parts.”

“Like fractals,” Kyle said.

“Exactly,” Greer said.

Jack had to refrain from scratching his head. What were fractals?

The pathologist continued: “But those magnetic inclusions or nodes are only half the story.” He led them back to the exposed brain. He used the tip of his tweezers to draw lines from one magnetite inclusion to another. “Each node is linked by a microscopic web of crystals, from one to the other, forming an interconnected array. And wrapped throughout this webbing is a dense region of neurons.”

“As would be expected,” Dr. Carlton Metoyer said.

The others turned to the head of ACRES.

Carlton explained. “It’s been proven that magnetic stimulation of the brain results in the growth of neurons and new synaptic connections. If this magnetic array formed during embryonic development, the low-grade and constant magnetic stimulation would produce a richer region of neurons locally.”

Jack remembered the earlier discussion. “And this would make the animals smarter?”

“Individually… to some degree. But it also adds validity to Dr. Polk’s theory of some wireless interconnectivity. More neurons, more electrical stimulation locally. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the transmission triggering the synchronization is electromagnetic. A weak EM pulse shared among the animals.”

Lorna shook her head, struggling through it all. “There’s still so much more we need to know.”

“Then I’ll let you all get back to your own research,” Greer said, “but there’s one last thing.”

“What?” Carlton asked.

The pathologist shifted to the other side of the table. Another tray rested there. A tiny object lay inside. It was clearly man-made. A plastic capsule the size of a pea. Through its clear surface tiny electronics were visible.

“I thought you’d like to see one of the microchips embedded in the animals.”

Lorna crinkled her brow. “Microchips? Are you saying they’re tagged?”

Greer turned to her. “MRI scans showed each animal had such chips implanted under the skin. We had thought they were ID chips used to mark each animal, like they do for dogs and cats. But I compared this one to the tags used here on our animals. This baby is much more sophisticated. It’s packed full of electronics.”

“Can I see it?” Jack asked.

The pathologist picked it up and passed it over. Jack studied it closer. Though he couldn’t tell much without further study, his internal radar buzzed a warning. From the complexity and degree of miniaturization, it looked military grade.

Maybe a transponder… or a GPS tracker…

As he thought that, the lights suddenly extinguished. The windowless room fell into pitch darkness. Everyone held their breath, waiting for the emergency generators to kick in.

Finally, Carlton snapped peevishly, “I thought we had the power glitch fixed.”

Jack tensed. His internal warning system went from a low buzz to a full Klaxon of alarm. He remembered his assessment a moment ago.

A tracker…

He pictured the explosion at the trawler. Someone had been attempting to cover their tracks. But not all of those tracks had been obliterated.

Some led here.

Certainty grew inside him. “It’s not a power outage,” Jack said coldly into the darkness. “We’re under attack.”

Chapter 28

In the darkness, Lorna stumbled away from the necropsy table and hit a warm body. Arms caught her, held her. She knew it was Jack by the musky mix of sweat and iodine.

Light bloomed on the far side of the table as Zoë freed her cell phone and used the light of the screen to push back the darkness. The phone wasn’t good for much else. The storm had knocked out the area’s cell tower-not that they had good service here anyway.

They all gathered closer to the phone’s glow like moths to a flame.

Carlton stood with his hands on his hips, maintaining his usual aplomb. “Agent Menard, what makes you think this is some form of attack versus a power glitch?”

Jack answered swiftly and forcefully. “Until I know better, Dr. Metoyer, I’m assuming the worst. Whoever firebombed that trawler could be coming after the remaining animals. That chip removed from the cub looked like a tracking tag, one that could lead them here.”

“That’s a stretch, Agent Menard,” Carlton dismissed. “Besides, who would go through so much effort?”

Lorna felt the tension in Jack’s body, which had gone rock hard. He still hadn’t let her go. Her brother eyed her with a dour expression. Under Kyle’s judgmental gaze, she finally slipped out of Jack’s arms on her own.

“Maybe we should listen to the agent,” Zoë said as she retreated next to her husband. “Take precautions. What could it hurt?”

All faces turned to Jack.

“This room has no windows,” he said. “Which means it’s a blind spot to any surveillance of the facility. Just to be cautious, everyone should stay here while I check out what’s going on.”

Greer spoke up. “What about just leaving?” He pointed to the far side of the room. “There’s a service ramp that leads out from here.”

“No. They’d have the place surrounded by now. The exit would be watched.”

“Then what do we do?” Zoë asked, her fear growing as large as her eyes.

“For now, you all hole up down here. Is there some place to keep out of sight, maybe barricade?”

“The walk-in cooler,” the pathologist said. “But there’s no way to lock it from the inside.”

Kyle spoke up. “Let me look at it. After spending four years in engineering school, I should be able to finagle a way to secure it from the inside.”

Jack nodded. “Good. Then everyone else grab weapons. Scalpels, knives, scissors, syringes, whatever you can find and retreat there. I’m going to make for my truck. I have a rifle and a shotgun in a lockbox out there.”

Greer had found a pair of emergency flashlights, clicked one on, and passed the other to Jack. “In case you need it.”

The group began to disperse under the pathologist’s direction, gathering anything sharp.

Lorna followed Jack out of the circle of light and into the gloom as he headed toward the door. A small battery-powered “Exit” sign glowed weakly above the doorway ahead.

“What about my tranquilizer gun?” she said. “The one I went hunting with. I dropped it back at my office. It’s closer than going outside.”

She didn’t want Jack confronting some assault team while totally unarmed.

He nodded. “Good idea.”

“I’ll go with you.” She knew Jack would argue, so she pressed. “It takes skill to safely load the syringe cartridges with M99.”

And it did. Just a few drops could kill a man in seconds.

Still, he seemed ready to balk.

“I’ll go just as far as the office,” she promised. “It’s only one flight up. Then I’ll head straight back here.” She passed him and reached the door before he could stop her. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

She pulled open the door, but he blocked her from stepping out. She was ready for him to push back, to refuse to let her go. Instead, he slipped out ahead of her.

“Keep behind me. No talking.”

She followed his broad back into the hallway. As the door closed the hallway went pitch-black. Jack reached and fumbled for her hand. His grip was huge, rough with calluses. But his hard hold helped settle her in the darkness. He led her in the direction of the nearby stairwell.

Why doesn’t he use his flashlight?

They reached the dark stairs and began to ascend. Faint light filtered as they neared the first floor landing. Windows let in some meager glow from the stars. After the pitch darkness below, even this little bit of illumination was welcome.

He continued down the hall. Her office and lab were only a few doors down. Halfway there, a muffled crash echoed, sounding like it came from the front of the building. Her fingers tightened on Jack’s hand. No one else was supposed to be here.

Jack hurried toward her office door. He pushed it open, swung an arm out, and scooped her into the room ahead of him. She rushed inside as he softly closed the door. Framed against the frosted glass of the door’s window, she saw him lift a finger to his lips.

She hurried to her desk, bumping her knee against it in the dark. She had left the rifle case on top of her desk. She fumbled for it, undid the latches, and quickly assembled the two halves. Marines might be able to break down their weapons in the dark, but not her. She struggled for a breath, but finally the stock snapped into place.

Behind her, Jack kept watch on the door.

She grabbed two syringe cartridges and plucked the vial of M99 from its velvet-molded compartment in the case. It was stupidly dangerous to attempt this in the dark, but she had no choice. She might not be able to assemble a rifle blindfolded, but she had years of experience with needles and drug bottles. She quickly filled the two syringes and loaded them into the rifle.

As she turned Jack’s silhouette slipped back from the window. Through the frosted glass, darker shadows swept past out in the hallway, eerily silent. She had not even heard a footfall. One shadow stopped outside the door.

Lorna froze, holding her breath. Her heart pounded against her ribs.

Then the shadow moved on. She could guess where they were headed. The kennel ward lay in that direction. Still, they would be disappointed when they got there. They’d find mostly empty cages. While the lamb was still down there, the other rescued animals were up another level on the second floor, still caged in the genetics lab after Lorna’s testing.

But how long would it take to find the others, especially if the intruders were using electronic trackers? Would the devices even work inside?

After ten seconds, Jack crossed to her, moving unerringly in the dark. She tried to give him the rifle, but he pushed it back into her chest. His words were a breath against her ear. “Stay here. Stay hidden.”

He squeezed her fingers tighter to the rifle, communicating silently.

She understood.

The game had changed. What was a possibility before was now a terrifying reality. They were under siege. He refused to leave her unarmed while alone. From the firm grip on her fingers, this was one argument she wasn’t going to win.

He didn’t wait for any acknowledgment and moved back toward the office door. He eased the door open and slipped out. Once in the hall, he pulled the door silently closed.

Lorna stared at his silhouette out there, suddenly not wanting him to leave. But Jack had no choice. His shadow retreated, heading in the opposite direction from the intruders.

But how many more were out there?

JACK HATED LEAVING Lorna alone, but he dared not wait. He hurried down the dark hall toward the nearest exit. He should never have allowed her to come with him. The others, locked up in the cooler, had the best chance of avoiding any encounter with the assault team. And he didn’t harbor any delusions that these were ordinary thieves. These were professional killers, likely with military backgrounds.

His mind ran over their potential objectives, and he didn’t like the conclusions he came to. Clearly this nighttime raid was a cleanup operation, a continuation of what was started with the trawler’s explosion. The primary objective had to be the collection and elimination of the remaining animals. But what then? How extreme was the order, how thorough a cleanup was necessary to cover their tracks?

He feared the truth.

As he reached the end of the hall, a set of swinging double doors led out to the main lobby and the front entrance. He knew better than to attempt to exit that way. He remembered how swiftly and silently the team had moved down the dark hallway. The intruders had to be employing some form of night-vision equipment, and someone was surely guarding all the exits.

Knowing that, he wanted to get as close to the parking lot before abandoning the cover of the building. Any open window would do.

Still, he wanted to know what he faced.

He edged to the double doors. A pair of narrow, wire-reinforced windows allowed him to spy into the shadowy lobby. The main entrance-a set of glass doors-lay directly opposite his position. He saw no movement, no suspicious shift of shadows inside or outside.

But he wasn’t fooled.

He began to turn away, then stopped. If it hadn’t been so dark, he might have missed it. In the center of the lobby, half hidden by a sofa, a small blinking red light drew his eye. The waxing and waning glow illuminated a five-gallon steel canister on the floor.

The hairs on the back of his neck shivered at the sight.

Bomb…

Jack pulled back and swallowed his fear. At least he had his answer concerning the ultimate objective of this raid. The assault team wouldn’t be satisfied with just eliminating the animals.

This was a total clean sweep.

No one was meant to survive.

Jack pictured the others hidden in the building, both those below and Lorna locked in her own office. He had felt the tremble in her body as he whispered for her to stay. She had put her trust in him, a trust now proven to be sadly misplaced. Holing up here would only get them all killed, blown up during the firestorm to come.

He had only one choice.

If it was a war they wanted…

Turning back to the swinging door, he shifted his weight to one leg and kicked out with the other. The door swung open, and he tossed the flashlight into the lobby while flicking it on with his thumb.

The blazing light tumbled in a wheeling arc into the pitch-dark lobby.

Jack trusted that whoever was watching this door was using night-vision scopes. He didn’t have a flash-bomb to blind naked eyes, but the sudden burning flare of the flashlight through the night-vision scopes would achieve the same end: to momentarily blind any spying eyes while at the same time drawing attention to the lobby.

Jack turned on a heel and headed to the side of the hallway, to a window that led out toward the parklike grounds between the building and the parking lot. If this was going to be a war, he needed weapons.

He yanked the window open, punched out the screen, and climbed into the bushes just outside. He ducked into cover. The distraction would only buy him a minute at most.

It would have to be enough.

He shoved through the bushes and sprinted toward the dark parking lot. Off to the side, in the direction of the front door, he heard a muffled order crack out, angry, pissed.

Jack kept low as he ran, praying the others kept their heads down, too. Especially Lorna.

But he made a mistake, underestimated his opponent.

A sharp detonation blasted behind him. Startled, he tripped on the wet grass and fell headlong. He caught himself and shoulder-rolled to the side. He stared back toward the building. Fire and smoke spat out the front of the facility. Broken glass rained down as far as Jack’s position.

He sat in the grass, stunned. They’d blown the bomb. He had only hoped to distract the others while he fled the building. Blinded, they must have feared an escape out the front door and overreacted, triggering the bomb. It was overkill, like swatting a fly with a wrecking ball.

From this response, Jack knew two things about the leader of this assault team. The bastard was ruthless and determined.

Jack rolled back to his feet and set off for his truck.

If they were to survive, he would have to be the same.

Chapter 29

Duncan approached the fiery ruins of the facility’s main entrance. He had a gas mask held in place as he pushed through the smoke. The heat seared his face, clearly defining where nerve-dead skin ended and healthy tissue started. He evaluated the damage ahead.

The incendiary charge had sent a ball of fire and superheated air through the front of the building. Flames licked through the toxic smoke, but the charge’s concussive force was only moderate. Glass had blown out, and a part of the drop ceiling had caved in, but structurally the building remained intact. Duncan had studied the schematics of the facility. The place was built like a concrete bunker, meant to withstand hurricanes and floods. It had been a calculated risk. One charge would not knock it down.

That’s why Duncan had ordered another ten charges set around the building. His goal was not to blast the facility to the ground, but to burn it down to the foundation. Already the fires from this single charge had spread into the second level. He hadn’t planned to prematurely set off the charge. But the sudden flare of light in the lobby had blinded him. Even ripping off his night-vision goggles hadn’t dimmed the flash. It felt as if his retinas had been permanently burned. Angry and fearful that the scientists were making a break for the main exit, he had reacted on impulse and blown the charge to plug the hole here.

No one could be allowed to escape.

Reaching the doors, he stared into the fire-ravaged lobby. Smoke, swirling soot, and collapsed debris made visibility difficult. One of his men had already dismantled the building’s sprinkler and alarm systems. He searched for bodies, for whoever tried to make a break for the exit.

Half the lobby was covered in the collapsed drop ceiling. If there were bodies under there, he’d never know. Satisfied that no one could have survived the firestorm, he retreated.

Luckily this facility was remote and isolated. He doubted anyone would have spotted the brief fireball rolling into the sky. Still, the premature explosion upset his timetable, shortened it. With fires spreading, his team would have to clear out of the building sooner than projected.

Once clear of the smoke, he crossed back to his second-in-command. The man had a hand pressed to an ear, clearly listening to a report from the team inside.

Duncan waited for him to sign off, then asked, “What’s the word?”

“The team reached the kennel ward. Found one of the animals. A sheep. We decapitated it as ordered. The team has the head and is moving out.”

“What about the others?” Duncan knew from the transponders that there should be at least another four specimens.

His second shook his head. “No sign. Korey is splitting his team. Three men are heading down to the morgue. To attend to the carcasses recovered from the swamp.”

Duncan pictured the two cats.

“The other three are going to split up and canvass floor by floor, room by room. We’ll find the others.”

Duncan slowly nodded. The order from Lost Eden Cay was to salvage what they could-specifically, the skulls of the specimens-and burn the rest. It seemed the problems on Eden had been growing worse. His superiors had little patience with the mishap here. Duncan needed to perform. But it was more than that. It was a matter of pride. His blood and flesh had gone into the Babylon Project. He would not see it fail.

The animals were the intellectual property of Ironcreek Industries. What was in their skulls belonged to the company, and in turn belonged to him. He recognized that if his team couldn’t find the missing animals, the flames would still claim them. Nothing would remain. Still, he wouldn’t be satisfied until he had the heads of all the animals.

Plus there remained one other objective.

“What about the scientists?” Duncan asked. “Have they secured at least one for questioning?”

Again that irritating shake of a head. “No, sir.”

Duncan sighed and kept watch on the building. He hoped he hadn’t inadvertently blown them all up, but either way, he’d know soon enough.

“Keep that net tight around the building,” Duncan said. “If Korey’s team doesn’t flush them out of hiding, the fires soon will.”

Chapter 30

Lorna crouched low in her office. She clutched the rifle to her chest. Since the explosion, it was getting more difficult to breathe. Smoke rolled under the door and continued to fill the small space. Terror kept her breathing sharp and shallow. She fought back tears, not all of them due to the sting in the air.

She pictured Jack caught in the blast. She had no way of knowing if he was alive or dead. Either way, she was on her own. She had only two choices left to her: stay and suffocate or move and risk being caught.

It was really no choice.

But where to go?

She wasn’t about to head out into the main hall. Any attempt to reach her brother and her colleagues in the pathology lab would mean crossing paths with the intruders. The others should be safe down there for the moment if they kept quiet. The walk-in cooler was the size of a double-car garage and steel-reinforced. It should withstand any smoke and fire for a while.

But that didn’t apply to her.

She glanced over a shoulder. A second door at the back of her office led to her adjoining lab, where she spent most of her workday. From there, she could sneak her way, lab by lab, away from the flames.

But she knew she had to do one thing first.

Igor and the others were still up in the genetics lab, a floor above hers. She could not let them burn. There was a small service stair that led from this floor up to the next. She could reach it if she crossed her lab.

Still, a part of her only wanted to hide, to let someone rescue her. She fought against it, knowing it was born of shock, that such panic hadn’t served her in the past, and it wouldn’t now.

Move…

She slowly rose from her crouch, drawing some strength from the weapon in her hands. She wasn’t totally defenseless.

Keeping a watch on the main office door, she retreated to the other. Once she was moving, the terror abated somewhat. She placed a palm against the lab door to make sure it wasn’t hot. Satisfied, she eased it open and searched the lab.

Tables, benches, and biogenic equipment-microscopes, catheters, micropipettes, incubators, cell fusion units-filled the space, along with books and piled lab reports. One entire wall was filled by a double-door refrigeration unit, along with a bench holding a long bank of stainless-steel Dewar’s bottles containing cryotubes of frozen embryos, sperm, and eggs of endangered species. It was her life’s work: the facility’s frozen zoo.

Despite her terror, a part of her feared the loss of all her hard work. It could be duplicated eventually, but it would take many years and not all of it would be recovered. She could only hope the fires didn’t spread here and that the liquid nitrogen would keep the embryos frozen long enough for a fire-response team to arrive.

Unable to do anything else, she crossed the dark space and headed toward the service stair that led to the second floor. She strained to listen for any sign of the intruders. The pounding rush of blood in her ears made it hard to hear. She stepped carefully, one hand holding her rifle, the other reaching out as she moved through her lab. Luckily, she knew the place well enough that she could have crossed it blindfolded.

She reached the door that led up to the next level. Again she tested it. It was warmer than the one into her office, but still not hot. She was headed toward the fires, but it should take her only a few moments to rush up, grab the animals, and head back down and away.

She edged the door open, found the stairwell empty, and hurried up the narrow flight to the second floor. The genetics suite encompassed most of this level. The door into the lab was only a step away. Holding her breath and steeling herself, she rushed across and through the door. Once inside, she leaned back against the closed door.

She did it.

Across the dark and quiet lab, a soft questioning chirp called to her. Igor.

The parrot knew she was here. She pictured eyes staring toward her out of the darkness. A slight chill danced over her skin. She remembered the strange intelligence the bird had demonstrated earlier.

She stepped away from the wall and shook away the chill. These were innocent creatures, cruelly used. And at heart they were still animals-only more so.

She crept cautiously down the length of the suite. Being on the top floor, the genetics lab was equipped with a few skylights, which lessened the gloom a bit.

She found Igor still in his cage in the conference room off the main lab. The cub and twin capuchins had been temporarily housed in transport cages, not much different from plastic airline carriers. The cages were used to temporarily hold and move various subjects undergoing testing.

Reaching them, she realized a dilemma. How was she going to carry them all? In their carriers, the cub and monkeys were no problem. But she’d need a third arm for Igor’s cage.

Slipping into the conference room, she crouched by Igor’s cage. “Now be quiet,” she whispered, lifting a finger to her lip. “Shh…”

He seemed to understand and matched her tone, uttering under his breath, “Igor… help, Igor…”

That’s the plan, little fella.

He must smell the smoke.

She unlatched the small door. She couldn’t haul the cage, but she could carry the bird. Igor hopped up on the inside of the door, cocking his head back and forth. As she pulled the door open the parrot came with it, as if he knew her intent.

He climbed to a wobbly perch atop the thin door. She held out her arm. Without any prompting, he hopped from the door to her arm and scrambled up it, using his beak on her sleeve to tug up onto her shoulder. He quickly sidled next to her head.

She felt the tremble in his body. The explosion and smoke surely had him spooked. He plainly trusted her to get him out of here-and she intended to do just that.

With Igor balanced on one shoulder, she slung her rifle over the other. Out in the lab, she collected the two carriers. Bagheera had slunk to the back of her cage and silently hissed at her, mouth open, tongue curled, baring immature fangs. The two capuchins clung to the front of the cage, each with one arm. Small masked faces pinched out at her.

Her charges in hand, she headed back across the lab to the service stair. The carriers made her ungainly, especially with the rifle, but she had to manage at least as far as the main floor. Even if it meant setting them all loose out a window, she would. They stood a better chance out there than in here.

As proof, the smoke in the stairwell was already thicker, the air hotter. It was like climbing down a chimney.

She hurried, trying to move as quietly as possible. The animals also remained silent, as if sensing the danger. The only sound was a deep rumble in Igor’s chest, almost like a moan. She only heard it because he was squashed up against her ear. She worried about toxins in the smoke. Birds were almost all lungs and air sacs and thus more susceptible to poisons.

She was happy to leave the stair and return to her lab. The room was cooler, likely due to the thawing frozen zoo. She noted a disturbing condensation in the air. She knew the cause. The liquid nitrogen used to keep her samples frozen was constantly evaporating, shedding gas. Normally this was ventilated out of the room. But with the power off, it was building up in here. Left unventilated, nitrogen would eventually displace the oxygen and become deadly.

Worried, she crossed to the lone window in her lab. She set the carriers down and cranked the window open. A river breeze blew in. Igor shivered. Claws dug into her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she shushed as she finished. “We’re going.”

She intended to head through Dr. Chang’s biometrics lab, which neighbored hers, then to the veterinary suite at the back of the facility. She wanted to get as far from the flames as possible, then find a place to hole up and hide.

But that was not to be.

“STOP!”

The sudden shout made her jump. It came from behind her. Igor lost his grip and slid halfway down her shirtfront before catching hold with his beak. She reacted instinctively and grabbed Igor with both hands and tossed him out the window.

He fell like a frozen turkey. Without feathers, he couldn’t fly. But it was only a short drop to the grass. Though she didn’t see him land, she heard a tiny squawk of protest. She prayed it wasn’t heard.

“TURNAROUND SLOWLY!”A shadowy shape stepped from the doorway to her office. Too distracted by the worrisome condensation, she hadn’t noticed the open door. “DROP THE WEAPON OR I’LL SHOOT!”

It took her a moment to realize he meant the tranquilizing rifle. She hurriedly shrugged it off her shoulder, let it clatter to the floor, and lifted her palms in the air.

She was trapped.

Chapter 31

Jack crouched behind a broadleaf bush. It had taken longer than he’d hoped to reach the parking lot. Sticking to cover at all times, he’d had to circle through the fringe forest to get here without being spotted. He dared not risk discovery until he was armed with more than his bare hands.

From his hiding spot, he stared toward his truck. It lay only thirty yards away-across open ground. There was no cover. He’d be totally exposing himself. To make matters worse, the parking lot was gravel. Without care, his boots would crunch loud enough to be heard across the Mississippi.

He had no choice.

Rising up on his toes, he shoved out between two bushes like a flushed rabbit and sprinted toward the truck. He expected to hear the crack of rifle with every step. But the night stayed quiet. With attentions focused on the facility, no one must be looking out here.

Reaching the edge of the lot, he skidded in the wet grass, then carefully stepped flat-footed across the gravel as quietly as possible. He crossed to the back of the agency truck and dropped out of sight.

He crouched, one hand on the ground behind the truck bed, and took a moment to collect himself. The truck was a Ford F-150 Raptor with a crew cab and custom-built shell in back. The weapons lockbox was in the rear compartment.

Before he could move, something wet and cold touched his exposed wrist. He jerked back with a noisy crush of gravel. A dark shape shimmied out from under the truck. It was a dog-a black-and-tan hound. A tail whipped back and forth behind it. It took him an extra moment before recognition struck him-followed by shock.

“Burt,” he whispered.

How could that be?

He struggled to make sense of it. He’d left the dog with his brother back at the station house. Then he remembered the phone call. Randy had said he was going to head over here rather than wait at the station. ACRES lay on the way back home.

So where was Randy?

Jack turned to the levee and searched along the private entry road that led from the river to the parking lot. He saw no sign of his brother’s truck, and that beat-up Chevy was hard to miss. As he looked, hoping for some other possible explanation, Jack pictured Randy stumbling upon the assault team, blindly waltzing his ass into a firestorm.

Jack sank to a knee. His vision darkened at the edges as he recognized the truth. Burt wouldn’t have left Randy unless he had no choice. The dog must have caught Jack’s scent and retreated to the truck.

He covered his eyes as if that would shut out the truth.

God, no…

A part of him wanted to run out toward the road, calling his brother’s name. But that would only get him killed, too. Burt slunk next to him, belly to the ground, his tail’s tip tentatively wagging, a submissive posture, asking for forgiveness, for reassurance.

Jack reached a hand and rested it on Burt’s flank. “Good boy,” he mouthed quietly.

He had to get moving now-or he never would.

With his heart weighted like a stone, he climbed to his feet and used a key to open the security shell in back. There was no overhead lamp to alert anyone equipped with night vision. He climbed into the back, reached the weapons locker, and fumbled in the dark with another key to unlatch and pull the lid open.

Inside, the lockbox held his service weapon, a Heckler & Koch P2000 double-action pistol, along with his Remington 870 shotgun. He strapped on the pistol but ignored the shotgun. Instead, he reached for the third weapon inside. He’d confiscated it from Garland Chase: an AA-12 combat auto-assault shotgun. Set on auto, shooting three hundred shells per minute, it could shred his truck to shrapnel.

As his brother would describe it, it was one mean-ass motherfucker.

Jack remembered the explosion. He grabbed the weapon. The bastard running this assault might be ruthless, but he never met a Cajun with his blood up. Jack would teach the bastard what it meant to be hunted.

He hopped out of the truck, careful of the gravel, and patted his thigh, a silent command for Burt to follow. Out in the fields and bayous, he and Burt had always made a mean-ass team-and now they had the proper firepower to match.

“C’mon, boy. Let’s go hunting…”

Chapter 32

With her hands in the air, Lorna faced the gunman as he came forward. He wore a heavy set of goggles over his eyes, obscuring most of his face. The lack of human features made him all the more menacing. Even more than the assault rifle pointed at her chest.

He waved her to the side with the tip of his weapon. “Get back from the window!”

She obeyed and retreated to the side, bumping against a bench. He kept his weapon pointed at her and lowered himself to one knee beside the two plastic crates on the floor. He quickly peered into each one, then stood up.

He touched two fingers to his throat and spoke in a clipped, military cadence. “Alpha One. I’ve secured one of the scientists. A woman. She has the animals. Two of them. She tossed another out a window on the west side.”

Lorna silently cursed. So he’d witnessed that.

There was a pause, then he spoke again. “The bird. That’s right. I’ll check.”

He flipped up his goggles and touched a switch on his helmet. A lamp flared above his forehead. The brightness blinded her. With the rifle still pointed at her chest, he ducked his head out the window and quickly scanned the lawn and bushes outside the window.

Lorna held her breath.

He pulled his head back and stared back at her. With his goggles off, he looked no more human. Under the helmet lamp, his face was all shadows and stubble, but his eyes shone at her, cold and merciless. She kept perfectly still under that predatory gaze.

But he ignored her and continued his radio communication. “No sign of the parrot.” Another pause as he listened to orders. “Yes, sir. Decapitate the specimens here. Collect the heads. Understood.”

Lorna went cold as he dropped his free hand to his belt and unsheathed a vicious-looking steel dagger. He lowered to a knee, but he kept those dead eyes on her.

He continued to speak into the radio. “I’ll wait for Takeo before moving the woman.”

The soldier-and there was no doubt he was a mercenary commando of some sort-ducked and pointed his helmet lamp into one of the crates. His dagger flashed menacingly in the sharp light.

As if sensing the threat, a frightened chitter rose from the capuchins.

Even past the thunder of her heart, a maternal surge of fury flooded Lorna. She rode that wave and burst forward. In her hands was a steel thermos. When the soldier had searched out the window, she had grabbed the bottle from the bench at her elbow and twisted the cap off one-handed behind her back.

She hurled the contents into the face of the soldier. Caught by surprise, he widened his eyes. The splash of liquid nitrogen struck him across the bridge of his nose. She twisted to the side as his gun reflexively fired. A flurry of rounds blasted past her. Glass shattered from shelves; plaster exploded.

Then gun and dagger toppled from his fingers. Both hands flew to his face. His corneas had been flash-frozen on contact. His eyeballs burst and wept down his face. Blind and in agony, he fell to his back, a scream strangled in his throat. She watched him gasp out a mist of condensation. He must have inhaled some of the liquid nitrogen as it splashed, sucked it into his nose and mouth and down into his throat and lungs.

He writhed and clawed at his face and neck, struggling against the pain, fighting to breathe with frozen lungs.

Lorna held back her own stunned horror before it paralyzed her. She’d never killed a person before-and though the soldier still fought, she knew he was a dead man, a living corpse.

She stumbled on numbed legs past his agonized form and reached the two crates. She knew she didn’t have much time. Others were on their way. She lifted one crate to the window, opened the gate, and upended the carrier. The two capuchins clung inside, scared and confused. She shook the cage, trying to dislodge them. One lost its grip and pulled its conjoined twin with it. The stunned pair tumbled into the dark.

Sorry, little ones.

She hated to abandon them, but their best chance of survival was away from here. She returned to the second crate and hauled it to the open window. Spooked by the gunfire, the frightened cub leaped out as soon as the gate was open.

She dropped the crate and retrieved her rifle. She considered going for the assault rifle, but the soldier writhed on top of it. She couldn’t get any closer-both guilt and terror kept her back.

But there was one thing she still wanted. During his violent struggles, the soldier had knocked the goggles off his helmet. She picked them up off the floor and pulled them over her eyes. The dark room suddenly snapped into a green-phosphorus clarity.

Able to see in the dark, she considered hopping out the same window, fleeing after the animals, but she’d be exposed out in the open. The intruders were well equipped and likely had the grounds under surveillance. The small animals might escape that net. She would not. Her best chance of survival still lay inside, to keep hidden for as long as possible. With the animals free, her only responsibility was to herself-and the others still trapped below.

She fled her lab and headed toward the rear of the facility. Now able to see, she moved swiftly, with more confidence. She needed to reach the veterinary clinic, her domain.

If she could reach there, she had a plan.

OUT FRONT, DUNCAN listened to the garbled moans die over the radio. He had no idea what had happened to his man, the one who had found the woman and the animals, but he’d clearly been incapacitated in some manner.

Another of Korey’s team came on the radio. His voice was raspy with static, but the anger came through clear. “Fielding is down. Dead. No sign of the woman. Crates are empty.”

Duncan touched his throat mike. “Find her.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and sucked on a lime-flavored Life Savers. If the crates were empty, she must have tossed the others out with the bird. The specimens were loose on the grounds.

Opening his eyes, he turned to his second-in-command, Connor Reed. He knew the man had been listening to the radio chatter. Connor’s face was a hard mask. He ran a hand over the stubble of his red hair. The younger man had been with Duncan’s unit going back to boot camp. He’d been the one who led the charge and blew away the mutated chimp that had mauled him in Baghdad.

“Who’s on the west exit?” Duncan asked.

“Gerard is at the tree line with a sniper scope.”

“Go join him. Search for those specimens. Shoot anything that moves out there.”

“Yes, sir,” he said and ran off.

Duncan knew Connor would not fail him. The man was as brutal and unrelenting as a machine. Once let loose, he would lay down a swath of destruction. Two years ago, Connor had wiped out an entire Somalian rebel village-men, women, children, even the stray dogs-all to avenge a comrade who’d lost a leg to a roadside bomb. He’d get the job done here with the same ruthless efficiency.

As Connor disappeared around the corner Duncan’s radio crackled to life again. “Alpha One, Korey here. Reporting from the morgue.”

“Go ahead,” Duncan said. “Have you secured the carcasses of the two cats?”

“Yes, sir. Their heads are on the way up. But we believe we’ve also discovered where the other targets-the scientists-are holed up. Found some sort of big meat locker down here. It’s locked tight, but I thought I heard movement inside.”

Duncan brightened at the news.

“Permission to blow the doors, sir. Though I can’t guarantee there won’t be target casualties.”

Duncan understood the man’s caution. They needed at least one of them alive. He weighed the risk of killing everyone inside and decided it was worth it. He knew there was at least one person still running loose. The woman. That was good enough.

“Do it,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir.”

Duncan returned his attention to the smoking ruin of the front of the facility. Fires burned deeper inside, glowing through the pall. No one was coming out this way, and Duncan had a man posted at the entry road.

It was time to end this.

He pulled out his sidearm. The heft of the Sig Sauer pistol helped weight and center his determination. He headed toward the least smoky window. There was a woman loose in there. Scared. On the run. Likely armed.

He smiled-or at least half his face did.

He didn’t want her killed. At least not until he was done with her. Got answers from her. And maybe a little more besides.

With his scarred face, few women would give him a second glance, except in horror. And even fewer would ever satisfy him. Unless paid or at the point of a gun.

He headed for the building, determined to find this woman. The hunting would make the prize all that much sweeter. Afterward he would get all he could out of this woman.

Then put a bullet in her skull.

Chapter 33

Jack kept to the forest.

He wanted to move more quickly as he circled toward the rear of the complex. He had traveled out and around, intending to come at the place from the back. He knew any eyes would be focused toward the facility, not over their shoulders.

Still, he dared not make a sound. He forced himself to move silently, to place each foot with care. Burt shadowed him, moving just as quietly, recognizing that this was a hunt. Jack’s heart thundered against such caution, urging him to run headlong back toward the facility, guns blazing.

Moments ago, he had heard gunfire, muffled and indistinct, coming from somewhere inside ACRES. He recognized the rattle of an assault rifle. He pictured Lorna bleeding, sprawled in death.

He fought against despair as he approached the southern side of the facility. From fifty yards away, he took a position under the low limbs of an old black oak, half shrouded by Spanish moss, and studied the building and grounds. The pathology lab lay to the rear of the facility, in the basement level. The others had holed up there.

But are they all still there… and what about Lorna?

He pictured her reacting to the fire. If she wasn’t still in her office, the flames and smoke would likely drive her toward the back of the place.

Meaning everyone should be close by.

At least, he prayed so.

He studied the building more closely. A concrete ramp led down to a steel roll-up door, large enough to drive a Pershing tank through. The pathologist had mentioned the back entrance earlier.

Jack didn’t intend to use that big door. Instead, he focused his attention to a smaller service entry beside it. As he recalled from the pathology floor’s layout, the door led into a side office. That would be his point of entry.

Sliding back behind the oak’s trunk, Jack knelt beside Burt. He dared not make for that door. Not yet. As sure as a catfish loved mud, there had to be at least one man watching the rear of the building. But where was he? With the woods dark as pitch, the bastard could be anywhere.

Jack gave Burt a scratch behind an ear. While Jack might not have night-vision gear, he had another way to extend his senses: one of the best hunting dogs in all the state of Louisiana.

“Time to flush out that bird.” Jack waved an arm and gave a soft command. “Hup!”

Burt took off like a shot. Since a pup, the hound had been taught to roust birds out of field and forest. Jack had trained him with clipped pigeons, and with the help of Randy and Tom, he’d established a flushing pattern with Burt, a precise zigzagging run that would clear a field of birds as efficiently as a lawn mower. The memory of training with his two brothers brought a pang of grief, as sharp as a knife to the belly.

He bit against that pain and followed down the center of Burt’s switchbacking pattern. The hound ran the woods back and forth, pivoting exactly at the range of a decent rifle shot.

The river breeze blew in his face, perfect for hunting.

Jack followed, moving from tree to tree, listening to the dark wood. He tuned out the whispering rush of his dog running back and forth. Burt was twenty yards ahead-then he heard it.

A snap of a branch to the right. A heavy footfall. Someone turning.

Jack set his back against a tree and pinpointed the location in his mind’s eye. He let out the soft whistle-chirp of a Carolina wren, one of the region’s most common and vocal birds. Burt knew the signal and went silent. Jack pictured the hound dropping flat to the ground as trained.

He waited for a full minute, long enough for the guard to turn his attention back to the facility. Satisfied he’d held back long enough, Jack slipped around the tree, and with even more caution than before, he crept toward the location Burt had exposed.

The edge of the woods appeared ahead.

Starlight bathed the open grounds beyond, brighter than the dark bower of the woods. Silhouetted against that backdrop stood a darker shadow. A guard had taken a position at the edge of the forest, a sniper rifle at his shoulder. The weapon looked like an M21, a semiautomatic rifle. If anyone had come out that rear door or dared approach it, this lone gunman would’ve dropped them in a heartbeat.

Pistol in hand, Jack moved like a ghost through the woods, glad to have the wind in his face. The river breeze would help mask any scent and muffle any telltale noises.

Still, when Jack was two yards away, something must have prickled the hairs on the other’s neck. The guard turned.

Jack moved fast. He dared not shoot. The crack of his pistol through the open air would be like a cannon blast out here. He lunged before the other could react. Jack twisted the weapon out of his startled grasp while sweeping the man’s leg and dropping him to the ground. Jack followed him down, landing both knees square on his rib cage, squashing air out, preventing a scream.

Jack jammed the pistol under his chin and fired.

Like with a pillow, the skull and helmet muffled the blast to a harsh pop. Still too loud.

Fearing any response, he leaped up, whistled for Burt, and sprinted toward the building. He ran across the open ground and hit the ramp at full clip. He flew down it, half tumbling. He came close to running headlong into the steel roll-up door but caught himself at the last moment.

He twisted to the side entry. He tested the knob.

Locked.

He had expected no different-only hoped for at least a small break. It wasn’t to be. He holstered his pistol and shrugged off the other weapon from his shoulder. The AA-12 assault shotgun was not a subtle weapon.

Then again maybe it was high time for subtlety to end.

He backed three steps and pointed the barrel at the door’s dead bolt.

Before he could pull the trigger, a spat of distant gunfire erupted. Off to the west. From the clear ring of the blasts, the shots had come from outside. Jack glanced that way.

What was going on? What were they shooting at?

He turned farther and realized someone was missing.

Burt.

Jack went cold. The hound seldom broke his field training, not unless something really irresistible struck his nose: a dead fish, a rotting squirrel. To make matters worse, Burt loved to roll in those rich stinks.

As he listened the spat of gunfire died off.

The night went quiet again.

Jack turned back to the door. Unlike Burt, he didn’t have the luxury of curiosity. Or subtlety.

He lifted the shotgun and fired.

LORNA HEARD SOMETHING loud blast beneath her. She couldn’t tell if it came from inside or outside. She’d been hearing periodic gunfire as she fled across the neighboring labs toward the veterinary clinic. Listening to the blasts, she was glad she had opted to stay inside versus taking her chances outside. She never would have survived.

A part of her heart went out to the animals she had let loose.

Were they the targets of all this gunplay?

Knowing she’d done all she could, she continued until she reached the veterinary wing. The clinic was currently under renovation, with the surgical suite undergoing a much-needed update. Because of the construction, there were no animals housed here.

Lucky for that.

With rifle in hand, she pushed carefully into the main treatment room of the clinic. She stayed low, her senses stretching outward for any hidden dangers in the dark. The smell of fresh paint and wood dust struck her. Through her night-vision goggles, she made out the central exam station with an attached wet table and overhanging surgical lights. To the left, a bank of empty stainless-steel cages covered one wall, while the other side opened into a scrub area and the half-renovated operating room.

All seemed quiet.

She crept only a couple of steps into the room and turned to a smaller door on her immediate left, marked with posted hazard symbols.

She tugged it open. Inside stood a bank of green oxygen tanks. Five in total. The set of tanks supplied the clinic and other labs with its piped oxygen. She knew by memory which tank fed the surgical suite and unhooked its regulator from the wall-then twisted the valve to on.

A fierce hissing flowed from the open tank.

She left the others untouched.

Trembling with fear, she closed the door and retreated toward the operating room on the other side of the room-but not before first stopping to raid the veterinary lab in the corner.

She only had one last preparation to make.

But did she have enough time?

WITH THE SHOTGUN blast still ringing in his ears, Jack kicked open the outer door. The small office beyond barely had enough room for a work desk and filing cabinet. He moved quickly. To his right, a closed door led to the pathology lab. Directly ahead stretched an office window that looked out onto the open floor.

Jack noted a few wobbling glows out there.

Flashlights.

They speared toward the office, drawn by the shotgun blast.

Never stopping, Jack grabbed the desk chair with one hand and flung it through the window. Glass shattered. At the same time he dove to the door, shouldered it open, and rolled out into the cavernous room beyond.

He spotted two men standing ten yards away.

They were in full camo, with flashlights in one hand, pistols in the other. Drawn by the exploding office window, they were a fraction too slow in turning toward Jack.

Sweeping around with his shotgun, Jack pulled the trigger and held it. A barrage of shells sprayed out like a machine gun. The rounds blasted the two men across their midsections, ripping them nearly in half.

Flashlights went flying.

Not knowing how many more men were down here, Jack leaped for the cover of a steel equipment locker. He stared across the room toward the hall that led toward the walk-in cooler.

A glow came from that hallway.

As he watched, the light clicked off.

Damn it.

At least one more man was still down here.

Before he could even calculate a strategy, two shots fired. The pair of discarded flashlights went dark. The last man was a crack shot, taking out the last lights.

Not good.

Jack was now blind. He pulled back undercover.

As he did so he heard boots pounding across the cement floor, the ring of a heel hitting one of the steel drains. He blindly pointed his weapon and strafed in the general direction. The muzzle flash would give away his position, but he had no choice. He kept firing until the drum magazine emptied.

A sharp cry of surprise cut through the barrage.

Jack’s ears strained as the echoes died away.

Was the man down?

Even as he thought it the steps resumed out of the dark, more stumbling, erratic-but they were heading away.

Jack dropped the shotgun and grabbed his pistol.

Across the room, a door opened and slammed closed. The man had fled out of here.

Suspicion rang through Jack. These were trained killers, not cowards. What would make the man flee like that?

He stepped out of hiding and kept his pistol pointed toward the door-when the world exploded.

Chapter 34

Duncan listened to the muffled blast fade away. It came from a floor below. He had tried to raise Korey’s team down there, but he’d gotten no answer.

Worrisome, but not his primary concern.

The place was surrounded. No one was getting in or out.

Duncan stood over Fielding’s dead body. His face was a bloody ruin, his eyes gone, his lips blackened as if flash-frozen. Duncan had already noted the liquid nitrogen tanks in the room and could surmise what had taken place. Fielding must have underestimated the woman and let his guard down.

Stupid.

Duncan felt no sympathy for the man’s agonizing death.

Another of Duncan’s unit, an Asian-American named Takeo, came up behind him. “Second floor is swept. No sign of the woman.”

Duncan didn’t acknowledge him. He wasn’t surprised.

Another teammate spoke by the lab door. “Do you want me to go check on the others down in the morgue?”

That could wait.

“You’re both with me,” he ordered.

With the place surrounded, nothing else mattered. He’d be out of here in two minutes. With at least one prize in hand. Then he’d burn this fucking place to the ground and be done with it.

“Where to, sir?” Takeo asked.

Duncan didn’t answer. He had noted a stack of cards by the lab’s computer. Dr. Lorna Polk. From his intel on this place, he knew she was the staff veterinarian. She ran this cryogenic lab and the veterinary facility. From the schematics, the veterinary wing lay toward the rear of this level, farthest away from the fires.

Panicked, she would’ve fled to a place of security, a place she knew.

Duncan stepped over Fielding’s corpse and headed in that direction. He moved cautiously. The body was a good lesson. He would not underestimate Dr. Polk.

“Follow me.”

JACK PICKED HIMSELF up. The blast had knocked him off his feet. Across the dark lab, a fire glowed. It raged down the hall that led to the walk-in cooler. Smoke poured into the main room.

He gave the open pathology lab a quick scan and saw no sign of the assault team. But the man who had fled would alert others. Jack didn’t have much time. He ran toward the fires.

As he rounded into the hall smoke choked the passageway ahead. Flames danced up the walls to either side. At the far end, the steel door to the meat locker had been blown off.

He heard a woman crying through the smoke. The assault team must have learned the scientists were holed up in here and had tried to blow their way inside. But someone had been heavy-handed with the C-4.

Jack rushed forward, heedless of the spreading flames.

As he sidestepped the blackened door an arm thrust through the smoke and stabbed at his face. Jack leaned back, catching a flash of silver as a blade passed in front of his nose.

“It’s me,” he hissed out. “Agent Menard!”

Through the pall of smoke, Lorna’s brother appeared, holding a scalpel in one hand. His other arm was cradled to his waist. From the angle of his hand, he’d broken his wrist.

Kyle pushed forward, unapologetic about nearly blinding him. He had only one thought. “Where’s Lorna?”

Jack shook his head, and his heart sank. He had hoped she would’ve made it down here somehow and joined the others.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Kyle looked like he was ready to lash out again with the scalpel.

“I left her upstairs, locked in her office.”

Jack moved past Kyle, drawn by a woman’s sobbing. He had to get these people moving. Inside the cooler, he found the neurobiologist, Zoë Trent, kneeling over her husband. He lay on his side in a pool of spreading blood. A thick steel pipe pierced his chest, impaled through by the force of the blast.

The man wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing.

The pathologist, Greer, knelt on the other side, a finger to the man’s throat. He glanced to Jack and shook his head.

A cold fury flashed through him.

Kyle spoke at his shoulder. Guilt rang in his voice. “If I hadn’t locked this place up so tightly… if they didn’t have to blow it…”

“Then you’d all be dead,” Jack said and knew it to be true.

Carlton Metoyer stood over Zoë, his face sunken and much older. He tried to get her moving. “He’s gone, my dear,” he said softly. “We must go.”

“Noooo,” the woman moaned and clutched her husband’s hand.

Jack had no time for niceties. He stepped forward and bodily picked her up. She struggled against him. He carried her away from her husband and down the fiery hall. The woman’s thrashing died down to a limp-limbed moaning. She hung on to him as if drowning-and maybe she was. But Jack was in no position to pull her back.

Reaching the main floor, he passed her to Greer and Carlton. “Get her out of here. Out the back. The way should still be clear for a few more minutes. Make for the woods and keep moving.”

They didn’t argue, too shell-shocked and scared.

Kyle hung back as they headed away. “My sister…”

Jack pointed after the others. “Go. I’ll find her.”

Still, he hesitated.

Jack shoved him after the others. “Trust me. I’ll get her,” he promised. Or die trying.

LORNA KNELT AT the entrance to the surgical suite. Wearing her night-vision goggles, she had a clear view across the treatment room to the entryway. She had been staring for so long her eyes felt dry and sandy. But she dared not even blink.

And it proved fortunate.

Without warning-not a footstep, not a whisper-the door swung open. Two shapes burst inside, staying low and splitting to either side, weapons at their shoulders.

A third followed, standing taller.

Something about his posture set her heart to pounding harder.

Lorna leaned out of direct sight and picked up the flint striker from the floor. She normally used the tool to ignite the Bunsen burner in her veterinary lab. Minutes ago, she had picked it up from the lab bench-along with the portable propane tank that fueled the burner. This far out, they had no natural-gas lines.

With her other hand, she lifted the loose air hose that rested in her lap. Normally the hose connected the anesthetic machine to the oxygen bib on the wall. She had disconnected the anesthetic machine but left the hose running up to the wall, where plumbed pipes ran from here to the oxygen tanks in the mechanical room. Afterward, she had spent two minutes backfilling that line with propane gas.

Lifting the hose now, she unpinched its end and raised the striker.

With a fast squeeze, the flint scraped, spit out a spark, and ignited the leaking gas.

Flames spat out the hose end. She pinched it closed again and watched a blue flame shoot down the propane-filled hose. The glow rushed up to the wall bib and vanished away. She pictured the fire continuing, sweeping through the pipes, a flaming arrow headed straight toward-

THE HISSING DREW Duncan’s attention as soon as he stepped across the threshold. Snake was his first thought, jumping immediately to a bestial threat. But it came from the left, from behind a closed room plastered with a pair of hazardous-warning emblems.

Blood rushed to his temples and pounded there.

Across the room, a tiny flicker of flame flared in his night-vision equipment. It could mean only one thing.

Ambush…

He didn’t have time to warn the others who had flanked right and left. He lunged away from the hissing door, shouldering into Takeo. His other teammate stood directly in front of the door-

– when it exploded.

A blue fireball shattered the door off its hinges. It struck the unsuspecting man in the back, splitting in half. A secondary explosion followed. Duncan managed to roll Takeo’s body between him and the blast.

Shrapnel blew, along with the tumbling clang of a green oxygen tank.

With the din still ringing, Duncan pushed Takeo off him.

The Asian man rolled to his knees, dazed, stunned. He turned toward Duncan as if looking for an explanation. Shrapnel peppered his face. Blood flowed. He was missing one ear.

Then the man slapped a hand to his neck.

His fingers removed a dart from under the angle of his chin.

A tranquilizer dart…

Deafened by the blast, Duncan hadn’t even heard the shot.

Takeo’s head fell back. He garbled something, choking up a thick white froth-then went rigid and fell back to the floor.

Before Duncan could move, something struck him square in the throat like a punch to the larynx. He scrabbled and knocked the dart off, furious at being caught off guard.

Despite his forewarning, it seemed he had still underestimated Dr. Polk. But there was nothing he could do now except curse her.

Fuck you, bitch…

LORNA WATCHED THE second man drop. She could tell he fought against the tranquilizer. But even a pinprick of M99 could be fatal. And she’d shot them both in the throat, where blood vessels were rich, and unloaded enough drugs to drop a rhino.

Still, she waited for thirty seconds until there was not even a twitch.

But she dared wait no longer.

Across the room, the flames spread, making the night-vision goggles a hindrance. She swept them off, cautiously stepped out, and headed toward the exit. She didn’t want to risk being trapped here by the fire. She also wanted another weapon. Her rifle had held only the two cartridges. She was out of ammunition.

She crossed to the first man and scooped his rifle from the floor. It was heavy, muscular, and unfamiliar. She studied the weapon as she sidled past the second man-but as she stepped away, something snagged her ankle, jerked her leg, and flipped her face forward to the ground.

DUNCAN ROSE AS the doctor’s face struck the floor. She cried out and tried to roll over, dazed, her chin split and bloody. With a savage grin, he climbed on top of her, swung his Sig Sauer, and cracked the pistol’s butt against the back of her skull.

Under him, her body went slack. Out cold. Only she wasn’t playing possum like he’d been doing a moment ago.

In the end, who underestimated who, Dr. Polk?

Duncan rubbed his throat. It still stung from the impact of the dart. He’d likely be hoarse for days. But nothing worse. The dart had struck his throat mike, blunting the needle enough that it only lodged shallowly into a thick callus of scar tissue. Not a hard target, considering most of his neck was wrapped in leathery scars from that old attack.

He flipped her over. She was still breathing. Good.

He also noted she was quite the looker. And blond, just the way he liked them.

Satisfied with his trophy, he leaned down and hauled the woman up and over a shoulder. He clamped a hand on her buttocks to hold her and headed back through the facility, intending to vacate the building the same way he came in.

Riding on the adrenaline, he quickly reached the main hall. Smoke choked the passageway. Out there, he spotted a body in camo gear, sitting and leaning up against one wall.

A hand lifted as he appeared, beckoning. A voice croaked out to him. “Sir.”

It was Korey, the assault-team leader.

The man had been down in the morgue, supposedly blowing his way into a meat locker to fetch one of the scientists. Fat lot of good that did. He plainly screwed it up, leaving Duncan to take matters into his own hands.

Korey groaned and dropped his arm, too weak to hold it up. The man sat on the floor, in his own blood-and shit from the smell of it-holding a fist to a belly wound. It looked like he’d taken a cannonball through his gut.

“Help…”

Someone must have gotten the drop on Korey’s team.

Duncan glanced back down the smoky hall, suddenly feeling eyes on him. It was time to get out of here. Ignoring the wounded man, he hurried to the open window.

He had what he came for. Fuck the rest.

Reaching the window, he hunkered down and climbed through the window with the woman. Once outside, he touched his throat mike and called up his second-in-command.

“Connor, prepare the team to move out.”

“Sir?”

“You have your orders. I’ll meet you out front.”

He headed in that direction.

“What about the escaped specimens?” Connor asked. “We’ve still not found them. These tracking transponders are shit in close quarters.”

That was true. The GPS was only good for pinning down a location to a quarter square mile or so. With so much forest and brush, it was a needle-in-a-haystack situation out there.

Connor continued. “All we’ve spotted so far is some stray dog.”

Dog?

Duncan then remembered the hound from the Chevy, the one who’d startled him. Fire entered his voice. “Did you kill the motherfucker?”

“No. Bastard ran off.”

Too bad.

“Then abandon the search,” he ordered with finality. “Once clear, blow this place to hell.”

“Understood.”

He hurried toward the truck parked out front. Whatever pride had fueled his need to apprehend all the animals had cooled. He had a good enough trophy in his arms. The remaining animals were weak and immature. They wouldn’t survive long on their own in the wild. And besides, he had what he needed for damage control. The woman could tell them what was learned here and who else knew. That should satisfy his superiors at Lost Eden Cay.

Then the woman would be his to dispose of as he pleased.

And he intended to be pleased.

Chapter 35

Jack knelt in the smoky hall beside a man bleeding to death. It was one of the enemy, maybe the very one he had shot earlier. The soldier hadn’t gotten far. From the gaping wound in his gut, he didn’t have long to live.

The soldier stared at Jack with glazed, pained eyes.

Knowledge of his death shone there.

Jack had seen it often enough in the battlefield. He placed his trust in that shine, knowing that in such moments absolution was often sought.

“There was a woman here,” Jack pleaded. “Blond. A doctor. Do you know where she is?”

Jack had already wasted too much time. As he fled the lower level he was forced to balance between caution and panic. He feared stumbling headlong into an ambush-he would be no good to Lorna if he was dead. But he also sensed that time was running out.

Where could she be?

The man croaked a single word, never taking his eyes off Jack, as if needing even this tiny bit of companionship at the end. “Captured…”

Jack tensed, biting back a curse. “Where did they take her?”

The soldier struggled to answer, but his eyes rolled back.

Jack gripped the man’s free hand. “Where?” he begged.

Eyes fluttered back to stare at him. The man’s head fell to the left. He stared toward an open window. A slight breeze stirred the smoke there.

“They took her out?” Jack asked.

No answer. Jack reached to the soldier’s chin and turned the man’s face toward him. Open eyes stared blankly. The man was gone.

He gave the soldier’s hand a final squeeze and shoved to his feet.

Following the only bread crumb left to him, Jack rushed to the window. He stuck his head out and searched the grounds. He saw no one. He quickly clambered out the window and landed in the wet grass. Off to the east, the sky was beginning to brighten.

He heard a truck engine roar to life from the front of the building.

Pistol in hand, he ran in that direction. His chest tightened with a cold certainty. The assault team was pulling out as dawn beckoned. And they had Lorna.

He reached the corner of the building and caught taillights through the smoke. A truck bounced out of the yard and onto the road heading toward the river.

Jack lifted the pistol, but he held back from firing.

He could just as easily hit Lorna.

Frustrated, he lowered his gun and sprinted toward the neighboring parking lot. The rolling smoke from the fires, which now licked up from the roof of ACRES, helped hide his flight.

He pounded across the gravel and reached his truck. He yanked the door, leaped inside, and keyed the ignition. Popping into gear, he smashed the accelerator. The engine roared and gravel spat out behind the spinning tires. The Ford leaped forward as Jack fought the steering wheel. He spun the truck, fishtailing in the gravel, and took off after the other.

He couldn’t let them get away.

Ahead, taillights sped down the winding entry road.

Jack flattened the gas pedal to the floor. Steering one-handed, he lowered the side window and stuck out his pistol. He fired at the other truck, low, toward the tires. He didn’t truly expect to hit them, but he hoped to get their attention, to startle them enough to either slow down or lose control.

He hit a pothole as he fired a third time, throwing his aim high.

The rear window of the other truck splintered with cracks.

Jack silently cursed. He had to be more careful.

Ahead, brake lights flashed for a second-then the truck sped faster. From a moonroof in the other vehicle, a figure climbed into view bearing aloft a rifle. Shots blasted back at him.

Jack ducked low but didn’t slow. His windshield spattered with cracks. A slug puffed into the passenger headrest.

The other truck’s brake lights flared again. The driver had to slow to make the turn onto the levee road that ran alongside the Mississippi.

Jack kept his boot pressed hard on the accelerator. If he could ram them from behind, send them sailing over the far side of the levee, he had a chance of stopping them.

The distance closed between them.

The other truck began to swing for the turn.

C’mon…

Jack urged more speed out of the V-8 engine.

Focused on the other truck, he almost missed seeing a man step from behind a tree alongside the road’s shoulder. He lifted a grenade launcher to his shoulder and pointed it at Jack’s truck.

Jack should have known that the assault team wouldn’t leave their rear flank unprotected. They had posted some man at the entrance, someone with serious firepower.

This all flashed through Jack’s head as he watched the rocket launcher fire, exploding with a spat of flame and smoke.

A SPATTER OF thunder woke Lorna-so loud it felt like nails hammered into her skull. She cried out, as much in pain as confusion. She tasted blood. Her body was being thrown about as if she were on a boat in a storm.

It took her a long agonizing moment to realize she was in the backseat of an SUV. The thunder was gunfire, coming from a shooter standing next to her, halfway out an open moonroof.

She tried to lift her hands to her pounding head, but found them tied behind her back. She was thrown against the passenger window as the truck made a sharp turn onto the levee road.

Memory flooded back to her.

The attack, the bloodshed, the ambush in the clinic…

She stared out the window toward ACRES. Another truck barreled up the entry road, coming straight at them, looking ready to T-bone right into the side of this vehicle.

Lorna recognized the other truck. “Jack…”

Then flames flashed by the side of the road, drawing her eye to a soldier standing there with a smoking weapon.

Jack’s truck exploded. The front end jackknifed into the air, riding a fireball. It flipped onto its rear fender and toppled over onto its cab. Glass and fiery metal rained down.

The blast was so loud she didn’t know she was screaming until it was over. Someone grabbed her shoulder and shoved her back into her seat. A hand slapped her face, momentarily blinding her.

“Shut the hell up!”

Through tears, she glanced one last time out the window. The SUV was speeding down the levee road. She could not see Jack’s truck any longer. But a moment later, a muffled detonation erupted farther away from the road. A massive swirl of fire climbed into the dark sky.

ACRES.

She closed her eyes, too numb to scream. She pictured her brother and her colleagues. She prayed they’d gotten out-but even that hope was dashed with the hoarse words from the driver.

“Connor, order Daughtery to do a final sweep of the area before he takes off. Kill anyone still alive.”

Chapter 36

Deaf, Jack lay on his back in prickly brush. He had trouble focusing his eyes. The world swam in and out of focus.

Fires raged to one side. Smoke rolled over him, smelling of oil. He turned his head enough to see the fiery wreckage of his service truck on the road.

He remembered the soldier with the rocket launcher.

Jack had reacted on pure instinct as the weapon fired. No thought, just action. He had popped the door and thrown himself away from the truck. The blast wave still caught him and flung him like a rag doll through the air into the weeds.

Must have blacked out a bit.

He lay a moment longer, unsure if he could move. It hurt to breathe. Busted a rib at least.

Then he heard the heavy tread of boots, rushing his way.

Jack pawed around him for his pistol, but he had lost it. He struggled up despite the complaint from his beaten body. He would not die on his back.

A figure rose up before him. The soldier had traded his rocket launcher for an assault rifle. The weapon pointed at his face.

“You are one tough bastard to kill,” he growled.

Jack lifted his arms. He knew there would be no mercy, no use begging. Not that he would. Instead, with his arms up, he flipped the guy off with both hands.

This earned a respectful sneer. Still, the man leveled the rifle.

Jack kept his eyes open, ready for what was to come.

A loud crack sounded.

Jack frowned as the gunman fell face forward, blood spewing out his nose, and almost landed in Jack’s lap.

Behind the soldier stood a wet dog of a figure. “Randy…?”

His brother tossed aside the thick tree limb he’d used to club the gunman. He glanced around, swiping a hand through his soaking-wet hair, then turned his attention back to Jack.

“So where’s Burt?”

A HALF HOUR later, Jack and his brother still combed the woods around the burning building. They had to move with care. The fire-bombing had turned the research facility into a blazing torch. Lit by flames, shadows danced throughout the woods, making the search all the more difficult and nerve-racking.

Randy had explained about the attack on the road, being forced into the river. But you couldn’t drown a Cajun that easily. He swam downstream a fair spell and crept back when he heard all the gunfire.

Traipsing the woods now, Jack couldn’t ask for a better partner. The two brothers hadn’t hunted together for years, but they fell into an easy and familiar stride with each other: one taking the lead, then the other, silently signaling, sticking to the darker shadows. Over the past years, a wall had grown between them, built by secrets and Jack’s self-imposed estrangement. As they traipsed the woods, Jack recognized how much he missed the simple camaraderie of family, how quickly that wall could drop if he’d let it.

But for now, he had a job still to do. It wasn’t just Burt whom the two hunted. They watched for any straggling members of the assault team.

Jack had confiscated the rifle from the mercenary Randy had clubbed. Unfortunately, his brother had hit the man with all his strength and caved in the back of the guy’s skull, killing him instantly.

“I was pissed,” Randy had explained. He told Jack about the roadside ambush, the crash into the Mississippi. “Fuckers almost drowned my ass.”

The death was unfortunate. Jack would’ve liked to interrogate the man, to discover where the others had taken Lorna. With the soldier dead, he had hoped to find another replacement out here. But with the sun now rising, their search came up empty-handed. They had circled the entire facility. The attackers must have evacuated the area following the firebombing.

“Now what?” Randy asked.

“We find Burt and get the hell out of here.”

With the area secure, Jack cupped his mouth and whistled sharply. Randy did the same, calling out Burt’s name. The fire’s roar fought to drown their efforts. Jack circled out again, whistling and calling more boldly this time.

Halfway back around, a loud crunching and snapping erupted from the deeper forest. Jack tensed, raising his rifle in that direction.

Instead of the dog, their calls drew four others out of the woods.

Lorna’s brother and her colleagues came stumbling forward. They looked haggard and ragged, but happy to see them.

That is, all except one.

Kyle came at Jack as if he was going to attack. His eyes searched to either side, then toward the smoldering fire. His voice was a tearful croak. “Lorna…?”

“No,” Jack assured him, but he didn’t blunt the truth. “She got out, but the others took her.”

“Took her?” he echoed.

Before Jack could explain, a baying howl rose from deeper in the woods to the west.

Randy brightened. “Mon Dieu! That’s Burt!”

His brother set off into the forest. Jack followed, leading the others. He wasn’t about to leave the hound here. With the sky brightening, someone would quickly spot the column of smoke pouring into the sky. An emergency response team would be closing down on the place with sirens blazing. By that time, he wanted everyone together-and on the same page.

As they crossed through the forest Kyle kept step with him, cradling his broken wrist. “Why did they take my sister?”

“To interrogate her,” Jack said bluntly. “To cover their tracks. They’ll want to know how much was learned about those animals.”

Kyle grew pale. “Then what?”

Jack glanced to him. The question didn’t need to be acknowledged. They both knew what would happen afterward. Instead, he answered the question buried behind the other. “They’ll keep her alive at least for another day.”

Carlton joined him. “How do you know that, Agent Menard?”

“Because this was meant as a surgical strike. To get in and out fast. It didn’t turn out that way. With the deaths and all the mess here, they’ll retreat as far as possible before questioning her. Likely to their base of operations, wherever that might be.”

“I’d guess somewhere beyond the U.S. border,” Carlton stated.

“Why do you say that?” Jack asked. He suspected the same, but he wanted to hear the doctor’s estimation.

“What was done to those animals. The way they were treated. No lab on U.S. soil would be allowed to perform such abominations. But to circumvent such rules and regulations, American companies and corporations frequently set up clandestine labs just outside our borders. In Mexico, the Caribbean, South America. In fact, there are thousands of such unsanctioned labs around the world.”

Jack digested this information. He’d come to the same conclusion, mostly from the fact that the trawler had tried to enter the country through the bayou. It definitely had the feel of an attempted border crossing.

“So what do we do?” Kyle asked.

Jack faced the others, needing their cooperation. “If we’re right, Lorna’s best chance for survival hinges on the kidnappers’ continuing belief that we’re all dead. They’ll feel more secure, less panicked, if they think they’re holding the only witness. Can you all do that?”

He got nods all around, even from Zoë. Her eyes were puffy and red, but also raw with fury. Her grief had turned to a hard anger.

“Over here!” Randy called. He had run ahead of the others, following Burt’s bawl.

Jack hurried forward. He found the family hound circling a tall cypress, his tongue lolling, his tail high and proud.

Randy stood with his hands on his hips and stared up into the cypress. “What the hell did that old dog go and tree?”

Jack looked up into the branches.

Something stirred there, then called down threateningly and stridently.

“Igor!”

Jack took a step back in surprise.

Movement drew his eye elsewhere in the tree. A pair of small brown faces peered down at him through clusters of cypress needles. A feline hiss rose from another branch.

Jack gaped at the animals, trying to fathom this discovery. He’d assumed they were all killed in the fire.

“Lorna…” Zoë said, her eyes widening. “She must have released them before getting captured.”

Carlton stared up, both amazed and intrigued. “Bonded, they must have stuck together out here.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. “I wonder if the terror of their flight bolstered that strange connection of theirs. Adrenaline flaming their neurons to a whole new level of synchronization.”

As the others spread around the tree Burt bumped into Jack’s leg, wanting acknowledgment. Jack now understood what had drawn the hound off into the woods. He remembered Lorna had used Burt to hunt for the cub’s littermate back in the bayou. And if Jack knew one thing about hounds, it was that they never lost their nose for a good scent.

Jack patted the hound on the side. “Good boy, Burt. Good boy.”

Kyle was not impressed. “What about Lorna? You’ve still not told us what your plan is to find her.”

“That’s because I didn’t have one.” Kyle’s face sank.

“But I do now,” Jack assured him.

For the first time since the power was cut off at ACRES, Jack felt a surge of confidence-not enough to wash away his bone-deep fear for Lorna, but it was enough.

“What do you mean?” Kyle pressed. “How are we going to find her?”

Jack pointed up the tree. “With their help.”