Triggered Response Read online

  Taking a deep breath, she decided to make another attempt to crack the password.

  She brought up the program and clicked on Start. Numbers flashed across the screen as the multiplier compiled one hundred possible ways in to Project Cypress. It would take her at least an hour to go through these potential passwords. She cut and pasted the first number into her encryption program.

  If only she could get to those computer files that might provide some explanations, then maybe she could settle down, get rid of the paranoia that followed her around like a black cloud.

  The first number she tried didn’t work—no big surprise, she’d been doing this for weeks now—so she cut and pasted the next in line.

  The work on Project Cypress had triggered an explosion in the lab itself and far-reaching chaos within the company. Now, less than two weeks later, several people were dead—Cranesbrook’s CEO, one of the security guards and two cops. Who knew if Wes Vanderhoven would ever be himself again, his mind having been affected by the accident.

  The second try gave her another error message.

  In some kind of bizarre coincidence, Zoe Sloane had been kidnapped. How in the world did a baby fit into the picture other than through her relationship to her uncle, the missing security chief?

  She entered number three.

  A knock at her office door jarred Claire back to her job. “Come in,” she said, even as she tapped a key that set her screen saver to life.

  Her heart nearly stopped when Dr. Ulrich entered. The fiftyish scientist wore his lab coat buttoned one off and his graying blond hair styled in a comb-over that didn’t fool anyone into believing he wasn’t going bald.

  He peered at her through wire-rimmed glasses, saying, “I need some information about a new computer program that will help us organize the results of our research. Can you have someone get that for me?”

  “Of course, I’ll do it myself.” She picked up a pen and held it poised over a pad of paper. “The name of the program?”

  “Bio-Chem Tracker.”

  “Got it.”

  Ulrich stood there, staring down at her as though he expected her to get him the information right this moment. Her pulse skittered through her veins. Her computer was still working on the password to his project, and if she took off the screen saver, he would see the big error message that was bound to be there and know what she was up to.

  “Is there something more you need?” she asked, keeping her voice pleasant. “Information on another program?”

  “Don’t you just…pull it off your computer?” He waved his hand in the air as if he were trying to pull a rabbit from a hat.

  “Oh, you want it now.” She gave him an expression that was at once distressed and conciliatory. “I have some work that I need to get to for Dr. Kelso first, you understand. Unless this takes priority, of course.”

  “Everything in its order, I suppose,” Ulrich mumbled, but he didn’t look too happy.

  Claire gave him her most dazzling smile. “I can have that information to you tomorrow morning, Dr. Ulrich.”

  “Very well.”

  He left her office shaking his head. Not until he was out the door did her tension begin to dissipate. Waiting until her pulse steadied and she was certain Ulrich wasn’t going to pop back in on her, Claire turned off the screen saver and entered the next number.

  Mac Ellroy had worked in Lab 7, too. When he’d called to tell her about the job opening for Supervisor of Computer Services, he’d hinted that the Project Cypress experiment was something he’d never imagined working on, but he’d kept his oath of secrecy as to content. And then only a few days after she’d interviewed for the job, he’d disappeared. Luckily she hadn’t used Mac as a reference or she wouldn’t have been offered the position.

  The official story was that the lab tech hadn’t liked the isolation of St. Stephens, so that he’d quit, moved back to Washington.

  But if he had come back to D.C., the first thing Mac would have done was demand she meet him at their favorite wine bar for a spill-all. He hadn’t told her he was going anywhere. His land phone had gone out of service, and he wasn’t answering his cell or returning her messages. His landlord here in St. Stephens had said he’d gotten notice of Mac’s leaving via an e-mail. Supposedly, Mac had simply cleared out and had left an extra month’s rent on the kitchen counter.

  In cash.

  Nothing in Mac’s handwriting, not even a check.

  Claire had called every mutual friend and acquaintance in D.C., but no one seemed to know where to find him, not even Mac’s ex-boyfriend. Benjamin had already moved on to a new lover, and Mac was the last thing on his mind.

  But Mac had certainly been on Claire’s. Still was every time she looked at the ring she wore on her right hand—the class ring that Mac had bought her as a high-school graduation present because she’d had no money to buy one for herself. They’d joked that their matching rings would bind them together forever.

  But now Mac had vanished.

  Had he stumbled onto something in the lab that had made it necessary for him to disappear?

  Or had someone saved him the trouble?

  She wondered, as probably everyone did, about Brayden Sloane, another “missing person.” He’d last been seen on the night of the lab accident. Was the security expert in part responsible for the terrible things that had happened at Cranesbrook both before and after the accident?

  Or was he yet another victim?

  Chapter Two

  “If you don’t want that, I’ll be happy to eat it,” a wizened old man said, a wrinkled, blue-veined hand snaking out over one of the two plank tables in the dining room.

  His mind had been wandering again, but once awakened to reality, he lowered his arm and prevented the theft.

  “If there are leftovers, they’ll give you more.”

  He shoveled in his food—the only way he could think about the stew that filled the hole in his belly. The food was as austere as the facility. In addition to several bedrooms fitted with multiple sets of bunk beds, there was a common room filled with not-so-gently used furniture, this dining hall, three toilets and a shower room.

  Though he remembered little more than bits and pieces of his life—not enough to connect the dots—he knew he didn’t ordinarily live at this low level.

  He remembered the feel of a real bed with a real mattress and the taste of a medium-rare rib eye and the touch of hundreds of needles of water spraying on him from multiple directions at once. He had other memories, too, precipitated by touching various objects, most notably a set of keys that had remained in his pocket. Like a car that was low and fast, a house whose back porch had a water view, an attractive redhead who aggravated him.

  What he didn’t remember was his name. Or his address. Or where he worked. Nothing that would give him a clue as to his identity.

  He could conjure nothing of true significance, no fully fleshed scenario that had taken place before he’d awakened on a boat in the middle of Chesapeake Bay. The owner and his friends hadn’t been too happy, especially not with the way he’d looked. One of them had called him a bum.

  But at least they hadn’t thrown him overboard, and when they’d realized he was hurt, rather than simply dump him at the marina where they’d docked, they’d taken him to an ER and had turned over his wallet to the guy at the intake desk.

  Big mistake.

  By the time the triage nurse had wheeled him into her cubicle, his wallet had disappeared, and with it any clue as to his identity. Even so, the hospital staff had kept him overnight for observation, sticking him in a bed against the wall in the ER with the other insurance-free indigents.

  His mind had worked furiously to grab on to something that would tell him who he was; he hadn’t been able to sleep all night.

  In the morning, the doc taking care of him said that it might take some time, but most likely memories would start trickling in. The hospital social worker had placed him at this homeless shelter for men. He’d s
lept, but every night he’d been visited by the recurring nightmare. Maybe there was more wrong with him than a few stitches could fix.

  He’d lost count of the days he’d been here as easily as he had of himself. The memories had started coming back, but at a really slow trickle.

  “Are you done with your newspaper?” he asked a salt-and-pepper-haired man who sat on the other side of the table.

  “Be my guest.” The guy shoved it at him. “Nothin’ but bad news anyhow.”

  “Thanks.”

  As he took the paper, their hands collided, and he was hit with an image of the man very different from the one sitting across from him. The guy wore a hard hat and clung to a metal span high up on an open floor of a building-in-progress. Nausea hit him as though he were afraid of heights, then dissipated as quickly as the image of the construction worker.

  His hands trembled as he smoothed the Baltimore Sun out in front of him.

  What the hell had that been about? It wasn’t the first time he’d had an episode like that, either. Touching things had become a chancy proposition. He never knew what was going to pop into his head. Was he going crazy? Is that why he couldn’t remember who he was?

  He glanced at the date on the paper’s masthead and realized he’d been at the shelter for eleven days. How was he ever going to get out of here and back to where he belonged when he couldn’t even keep track of time?

  His gaze dropped to the lead story. Security Expert Sought For Questioning. Two photos accompanied the article. One of a baby, the other of a man who looked amazingly like the guy in his mirror. Spiked dark hair, pale gray eyes, broad forehead, square jaw.

  He really could be the guy in the photo.

  His stomach knotted as he skimmed the article.

  Brayden Sloane…brother of Echo Sloane…uncle of a kidnapped baby named Zoe…partner in Five Star Security in Baltimore…formerly in charge of security for biggest client, Cranesbrook Associates in St. Stephens, until a mysterious explosion twelve days before…

  Twelve days ago, he’d somehow ended up in a boat coming from St. Stephens.

  Coincidence?

  Brayden Sloane. It seemed to fit. Unable to deny he looked like the man in the photo, he tried on the name. Brayden…Bray. That was it, had to be. Right? At last, he thought he had a name.

  What about the rest?

  Remembering the second part of the recurring dream—the explosion in a lab, a white-coated man on the floor—he thought that might have happened at this Cranesbrook Associates. But what about the baby? His niece?

  He vaguely remembered a round little face, dimpled cheek and a tiny hand that clung to his finger. The thought tightened his chest and he felt anger surge through him that someone would hurt her.

  He took a deep breath and tried to remember the past, but no matter how hard he tried, nothing new came to him. Bits and pieces of memory floated around in his brain but he simply had no control over what he could latch on to.

  Kind of like the touching thing. Only, those memories belonged to other people.

  He finished skimming the article. The authorities were looking for him in connection with both incidents. Did they merely think he had information or did they really think he was a criminal?

  Was he? Of what exactly was he guilty?

  Bray didn’t know.

  He couldn’t have kidnapped his niece, though. When she’d gone missing, he’d been right here at the shelter, as he had since being released from the ER.

  As to the incident at Cranesbrook, he simply didn’t know his own involvement. That lack of knowledge being the stumbling block to turning himself in. What if they locked him up for good? Then he might never know what really happened.

  First he needed to find out more. The truth. See if he could jump-start his memory. To do that, he would have to get to St. Stephens. To Cranesbrook itself.

  But how? In addition to the set of keys in his pocket, he’d found some bills and change. A little less than twenty bucks. He’d spent nearly five already. Not to mention he didn’t know where he was going.

  Approaching the volunteer at the food table, a soft-looking, middle-aged woman, easy to talk to, he asked, “Hey, Sophie, can you tell me where St. Stephens is?”

  “Across the Chesapeake, honey.”

  “Any way to get there other than by boat?”

  “Sure. You could drive down through Annapolis and take the bridge over. Well, if you had a car. I don’t know if a bus goes across the Chesapeake or not. Did you remember something, honey? Do you know who you are, where you belong?”

  “I only wish. Thanks, Sophie.”

  He did have keys to a car, only he didn’t know where he’d stashed the vehicle. Maybe in St. Stephens. And he wouldn’t have the bucks for a bus anyway. That left only one option he could count on.

  He wondered how long it would take his thumb to get him where he needed to be.

  STILL AT HER COMPUTER, Claire entered another number…another…and another….

  She spent all afternoon wasting her time on what proved to be a futile task.

  The whole time, her mind kept spinning, kept looking for reasons why people associated with the mysterious Project Cypress weren’t safe.

  Her worst fear was that her best friend had been the first one to die because of it. And then his death had been covered up. A professional cover-up, she thought. The reason she’d still taken the job at Cranesbrook when it had been offered to her.

  The only reason she’d applied for something so far from D.C. in the first place had been to be near Mac. She’d been lonely and had wanted to be near the only person who really felt like family to her.

  And now he was gone and others were dead, and a mystery shrouded the two owners of Five Star Security in particular.

  Her thoughts strayed to Gage Darnell, Brayden Sloane’s partner. Gage had been affected by the lab explosion, had been taken to Beech Grove Clinic along with Wes Vanderhoven. But unlike Vanderhoven, who was still there for all she knew, Gage had escaped.

  She didn’t get that part—why he’d needed to escape the clinic as if he’d been held prisoner.

  Suddenly it hit her—the significance of the wire transfer that had gone from Cranesbrook to a Dr. Morton at the clinic the morning after the explosion. She’d seen it by accident, really, and had thought nothing of the money that had changed businesses. Only she was thinking of it now.

  Two million bucks for what?

  She switched gears and ran a search on Beech Grove Clinic but found no documents that pertained to the accident or to the men brought there or to the money.

  Cover-up money?

  Unable to find the entry, she tried again. No dice. Nothing. It was gone. Poof. As though it had never existed.

  Cover-up money covered up?

  Frustrated, Claire gave up for the moment. Tired of entering numbers that didn’t work and checking files that had no answers for her, she felt as if she would never solve anything from her desk. The next step, then, was to see if she could find any answers in Lab 7 itself now that it had been cleared.

  Answers the authorities hadn’t been able to find.

  She sighed.

  She didn’t even know what she was looking for. She only knew she had to try.

  THUMBING FOR RIDES didn’t work nearly as efficiently as a steering wheel and an accelerator, Bray soon learned. For one, the average citizen was wary of picking up a stranger. Truck drivers were far more accommodating, perhaps because they spent too many hours alone in their cabs.

  He’d picked up his easiest ride down to Annapolis. The driver had offered him gum, and in taking a piece, Bray had seen the guy with a group of little kids surrounding him as he handed out sticks of gum from a big pack.

  Getting across the bridge that spanned the Chesapeake was a bit trickier. So was the driver. Bray didn’t get anything off him until his map got knocked to the floor and the driver asked Bray if he could get it. Suddenly, Bray was driving through a desert of saguaro cactus and f
igured the guy was a long way from home.

  Heading south along the eastern shore had been the big problem. No eighteen-wheelers going his way. Only lots of suspicious drivers. He’d managed it, though, walking maybe a third of the way.

  Finally he’d caught a ride with an older woman who had two dogs big enough to tear him to bits if he made a wrong move. Patting one of them, he saw the dog on his back, wiggling like a puppy for his mistress, who was wearing a smile she apparently saved for her pets. Without so much as a change of expression, she’d let him off at the edge of town.

  So here he was, hours later, approaching Cranesbrook on foot.

  The sun had set and deep shadows gave the place an added spooky feel as darkness fell. Ahead, chain-link fence topped by razor wire surrounded several red brick buildings. A security station was set up at the entrance and a guard in gray was checking incoming vehicles.

  Bray clung to the side of the road where his approach could be hidden by clusters of bushes and trees. He watched intently, but didn’t see the guard glance his way as he checked in a car and then a van. A supply truck rumbled down the lane and as it passed Bray, a cigarette butt flicked out of the window and landed at his feet, as if he were meant to pick it up. So he did.

  Immediately he saw the driver and the uniformed guard chatting away like old buddies….

  Maybe they were. And maybe that would give him a way into the compound, Bray thought, noting the back of the truck was only half-gated.

  Some buried instinct took over and he seamlessly slipped through the shadows as the truck came to a stop.

  “Hey, Johnny, kinda late for a delivery,” he heard the guard say.

  “Hormones, Howard, hormones. They get a man right where he lives.”

  Bray ducked low and, without making a sound, crossed to the back of the delivery truck.

  “New woman, huh?” the guard asked as Bray found a toehold for a boost upward.

  “Nothing permanent. Met her in that new nudie bar up on the highway. She’s on her way west. Needed someplace to stay last night.”

  Lightly hauling himself over the gate, Bray noted how familiar this felt to him, as if his body was trained for this kind of activity. His pulse had quickened but that was the only effect the subterfuge had on him.