Omens

Guinea Pig

Chandler listened to the message. Then he smiled. He could hear the desperation in the girl’s voice, in the way she’d hesitated, barely able to get the words out. She’d kept her tone clear, trying to be brave, but she was trapped and she knew it. She wanted to negotiate. How quaint.

He summoned Anderson first. Then he phoned the girl back. She answered on the first ring.

“Miss Larsen,” he said. “Is that the name you use now?”

“It is.”

He gave a soft chuckle. “All right. Let’s talk. By that, I presume you mean negotiate.”

“I might.”

He strained to pick up noise that might suggest where she was hiding. “Admirable, but under the circumstances I don’t think you have anything to negotiate with.”

“Then you wouldn’t have returned my call. Technology is amazing, isn’t it? We don’t have to play cat and mouse, blindly groping around unable to communicate. Likewise, I don’t need to play that old ruse where I say I have details of your crimes locked in a safe, to be opened in the event of my death. I can just tell you that I have it right here, in an e-mail, complete with photos of what happened in this house.”

He tried not to pause. He wasn’t concerned, of course. He’d cleaned up worse messes than this. Still, it annoyed him that he hadn’t considered this possibility. He’d been out of the game too long.

He glanced at Anderson, coming out into the yard now. That reminded him what he was supposed to be doing—not chatting with the girl, but using background noise to pinpoint her location. Just keep her talking. She seemed willing enough.

“And Mr. Walsh himself?” Chandler asked.

“Dead, I think. Or dying. Your bodyguard shot him in the thigh. He seemed all right, but after running through the house, I think that bullet nicked the femoral artery. There’s a lot of blood. He might still be alive. I can’t tell. But if he is, I’d suggest you fix that when you get a chance. Otherwise, you’ll need to bargain with both of us, and he’s a much tougher negotiator.”

“So I’ve heard.”

By God, she was a cold one. Last night, she’d been ready to shoot him to save Walsh. But the moment her lawyer became more burden than help, she’d let him die. Not surprising, given where she came from. He understood now why the Huntsmen had forbidden him to simply remove her from the equation. The restriction rankled, but he dared not defy them. That was beyond dangerous.

The girl continued, “I’m sure your plan isn’t to leave me alive, either. Actually, I’m surprised you let me live this long. You knew I was digging for answers. You could have killed me. Instead, you had brainwashed assassins kill Niles Gunderson and Joshua Gray before I could get to them. That seems … complicated.”

She paused. When she did, he heard the faint sound of a furnace turning on, warming the cool morning. Furnace meant basement.

He motioned to Anderson and mouthed “basement.” The bodyguard lumbered off.

Chandler realized the line had stayed quiet. “Miss Larsen?”

“You’re not even going to pretend you have no idea who I’m talking about?”

Chandler inwardly cursed. He’d been paying too much attention to that furnace to react properly to her accusation about Gunderson and Gray. He should deny it, and yet … Well, he hadn’t gotten to where he was by doing what he should. Especially when that instinct to deny was really just his old CIA training. It worked most times, but a smart and independent man also had to know when to give a little. Just a little.

“I know who Mr. Gunderson is,” he said carefully. “And I know that Mr. Gray contacted Will, who called me about it. He was concerned. I told him to take care of it. Naturally, I only meant for him to speak to Mr. Gray, and if he did more, that’s regrettable, but hardly my fault.”

“It was Evans who wanted to get close to me, wasn’t it? You disagreed—like when you disagreed with how he wanted to handle Peter’s discovery.”

“That was unfortunate.” Chandler paused. Play the string out a little and then stop it short. Keep the fish on the line while the shark moved in. “I didn’t kill Peter, though. Again, I merely told Will to take care of it. When I learned of the deaths, I confronted Will. I knew what had happened. They’d argued and there was an accident. The girl came in. Will panicked and killed her. He denied it, but the fact that he staged the scene to look like the work of your parents sealed the matter.”

“How?”

“My dear girl. You do know his field of expertise, do you not? Sociopaths. He followed the murders very closely. Even discussed it with friends on the police force, which is how he knew details that were never made public. He was fascinated by sociopathy. Which is why he was fascinated by you.”

A moment of silence as she worked it out. “Because I could, potentially, be what MKULTRA was searching for. The perfect assassin. I have the genes but not the experience. I’m a blank slate for his experiments. And I’m not currently serving a life sentence.”

“That is an advantage.”

“You let him build a relationship with me, because you were intrigued by his theories. You still are.”

“Possibly. Is that what you’re offering Miss Larsen? Yourself as a guinea pig?”

“Not sure I have much choice.” She went quiet for a moment. “You said Evans denied it. But he ultimately confessed?”

Chandler hesitated only a split-second before smoothly lying. “Yes, he confessed. To me, acting as his doctor, not his friend, though, which meant I wasn’t at liberty to reveal it. With his death, that changes. I have proof—”

A gunshot sounded in the basement.

“What the—?” She shrieked. “You—you bastard!”

Chandler smiled. “Calm down, Miss Larsen.”

“I’m negotiating with you in good faith, you son of a bitch, and you sent your lackey down here to shoot me. All I have to do is hit the send button. It only takes one second.”

“It was a mistake,” he said smoothly. “I told him—”

“Call him off! If I see his face, I will send this e-mail. I swear it.”

The line went dead.