Last shot

Chapter 76

Timing his approach to dodge overlapping security patrols, Dolan arrived short of breath at the proximity reader guarding the back entrance above the parking-lot ramp. His own access-control card had been disabled as he'd predicted, and so had Chase's, but not Chase's generic guest pass, which he'd pulled from the G-Wagen's glove box. Just as the guard's footsteps rounded the corner, Dolan eased the door shut behind him and stood quietly inside the Beacon-Kagan Building, breathing in the darkness.

The rear of the floor was unfamiliar to him. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark, then eased slowly down the corridor. His sneakers padding quietly on the tile, he moved through the sliding glass doors into the test suite, passing beneath the oil portrait of his father. Agitated at the movement, the monkeys rattled their cages, flailing and screaming, the sound reaching a madhouse pitch. Dolan jogged through the heated production room, roller bottles filled with Xedral grinding all around him, and to his own bench. One of the junior researchers had left a champagne bottle, bow around the neck, on Dolan's chair. The attached card hung open, the note reading Congrats on the IPO! Your hard work finally paid off!

Working rapidly, he logged in to the system as his brother, using the code he'd pulled from Chase's cell phone. The monkeys' continued shrieking did little to settle his heartbeat. He waited, a held breath burning in his chest.

The log-in screen blipped away, leaving him with unrestricted access.

He searched the drives for key words, clicking past the reports teed up for public consumption and locating the data he was looking for-a set of files buried three folders deep on the C drive. Trial data, study databases, and finally, Lentidra's raw data. The true data. Most damning were interoffice memoranda circulated by Dean himself. Dolan gathered up an assemblage of key documents, compressed them into a neat packet, and attached them to an e-mail. He found Deputy Rackley's business card in his wallet and typed in the e-mail address.

His finger hovered above the mouse for maybe a full minute.

Lentidra had been ready for Phase I human trials months ago, but Dolan had slept through the backstage machinations that had removed it from the production line and sealed it behind a wall of secrecy. The cost of its delay was paid in human lives, as would be the cost of its continued captivity. All because Dolan had acted feebly, even in the face of his own suspicions.

He thought about Tess Jameson, with so much less to her name and more on the line. Up against vastly more powerful corporate muscle, she'd done everything to orchestrate her son's survival. And just when she'd gotten it within reach, her conscience wouldn't let her seize it. She'd fought to bring a cure to others, even knowing that Sam could die as a result. And now here Dolan was, Vector's principal investigator following the case laid out by a mother with limited resources, education, and opportunity.

The monkeys still hadn't calmed in the test suite, jungle cries echoing around the hard lab surfaces. The din ringing in his ears, Dolan clicked the mouse, sending the e-mail.

The icon spun as the data uploaded. Biting his thumbnail and waiting for the chime, he heard instead the sound of glass shattering in one of the accompanying suites.

A jumble of fears coalesced. Likely Dean had installed cameras inside the lab. So either Dolan had been spotted or soon would be. Maybe Chase's guest access card had called up an alert on some remote security computer.

Slowly, he eased away from his bench, passing back through the production room, the heat of the incubator making his neck sweat. He groped around on the wall, finding the light-switch panel and disabling the motion-sensor feature before stepping fully into the test suite. The monkeys hopped around, their cages banging on the lab counters, but there was no sign of any guards. And no shattered beakers to explain the noise he'd heard.

The access card failed to open the exit in the back of the test suite. Numb with disbelief, Dolan tried again. The proximity reader gave him another flashing red light. Security had locked down the building.

The fire-escape door toward the end of the corridor was by law manually operated. Guards might be waiting for him outside, but he'd rather risk a public confrontation than wait in the dark for whoever broke the glass and was likely stalking him. He now had concrete evidence of what he'd sensed all along-his father was capable of anything.

Dean's painted face stared down as Dolan slipped through the sliding glass doors. Before proceeding up the corridor toward the exit, he turned off the motion sensor on the overheads. The window at the end of the corridor, normally lit by passing headlights, was a black square. Plotting each footstep, he crept along the tile. The monkeys had finally silenced, but the quiet was proving equally sinister.

A faint rustling in the vector-storage room stopped him dead. Through the vast internal window, he caught a partial view of the room. A refrigerator door hung open, casting a faint light across the floor. The freeze-dried Xedral vials, normally neatly lined on the shelves, had been pulled down. A few lay shattered on the concrete. A number of Styrofoam shipping containers had been knocked over, dry ice misting up from the floor.

Why would a guard ransack the vector-storage room?

Before he could flatten to the wall, the door kicked open and Walker solidified from the dark, shrouded in wisps of vapor.

The gunmetal, when pressed to Dolan's neck, felt like ice.