Chapter Seventeen #3
“This is more Larry’s area than mine, but from what I can see and understand, this experiment failed.”
Eve tucked it away. “Bring up another, Feeney, not related to this. Without the red check.”
“Got some with yellow.”
“In progress,” Dolbey told him, and he brought one up.
As Dolby studied, her color fell away, her hand reached up to rub at her throat.
“What is it?”
“It’s poison. It’s . . . an airborne hallucinogen, much like, in my opinion, what happened a year or so ago in New York. What Nadine Furst wrote about.”
“Red Horse?”
“Yes, similar, again in my opinion. Not finalized or refined. Yet. It’s a goddamn bioweapon, Lieutenant Dallas. This is not what we do here. This isn’t something that helps, that improves, that saves lives. It takes them, or takes the mind. It destroys.”
She swung around to Eve, color back now, face livid. “I’m telling you, nothing goes on here without Banner and Wyst’s knowledge and approval. I’d swear to that. They know about this. They approved it, green-lit it, funded it, staffed it. This is a crime against humanity. This has to stop.”
“It’s going to. Feeney, we’ve got enough. Have your team confiscate the e’s, I’ll send in officers for the rest.”
“Please don’t have them handle the contents of those cabinets. I can suit up, put them in a secure container for transport. You want to have them taken to a secure lab, with people trained to handle them.”
“Okay. We appreciate your cooperation.”
“You’ve got every bit of it. This is against everything I believe in, everything I’ve worked for. When it comes time to testify in court, I’m there.”
“Good to know. Peabody, let’s go find Wyst.”
“Kick him in the balls when you do.”
“Well, symbolically anyway.”
“That’s crazy shit, Dallas,” Peabody said when they left. “That’s war crime shit. And Jesus, it’s giving me flashbacks to what Red Horse did to people. Just regular people. Maybe they planned to sell it to some terrorist group.”
“They are the terrorist group, Peabody, and they won’t get the chance to use it. Nobody will. The climate thing. If you could control or manipulate the weather?”
“I don’t see how.”
“The point is they put the time and the money into trying to find out how. Redman found out some of this was going on. This, or something else just as nasty. And that’s why.”
She scanned areas as they went, watched the team making progress before she took an elevator to Wyst’s floor.
“If he’s not here, we go find him. And shit, I need my ride.”
“I’ll have someone bring it. Need the code so they don’t get zapped trying to.”
“Right.” Eve gave it to her, then stepped out in Wyst’s lobby.
Instead of manning the reception desk, two people sat in chairs. Both stood when she and Peabody got off the elevator.
“We don’t know what’s going on!”
“You’ll be cleared to go home very shortly.”
She wound her way back to Wyst’s office, where his coordinator sat, hands folded, distress covering her like a blanket.
Her comp had already been removed, and Trueheart, a uniform, and Callendar worked on Wyst’s office.
“I don’t know what’s happening. I want to go home. I never want to come back here again!”
“Don’t blame you. You’ll be cleared shortly. Where is Wyst?”
“I just don’t know! He was here, then he wasn’t. He must’ve left when I was on a break, and he didn’t leave me any instructions. Then the police are coming in, and—”
“When was your break?”
“Ah, maybe around three.”
“Peabody, have someone check security, confirm that. He left no instructions? Didn’t tell you where he was going?”
“No, honest, but . . .”
“Let’s hear the rest.”
“Well, I—it’s not like him to just leave that way, and he’s been so upset, so snappy, you know?
I tried to work, and I saw that the executive penthouse was blocked off for tonight and tomorrow.
He’d actually canceled—and that’s my job—the exec who was coming in to use it, and booked him in a hotel. ”
“Is that right?”
“So I looked, and I saw the swipe for the penthouse is missing. The one Mr. Wyst keeps. Um, he uses it sometimes, sure. Even keeps some of his things there—locked in one of the bedrooms. But he never told me he needed it tonight.”
“Trueheart, as soon as this area is cleared and secured, get contacts, then let the staff go home.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s go, Peabody.”
“Car’s on the way. Why didn’t he take off like O’Brian?”
“Has to make arrangements. Has to decide if he can hunker down long enough for us to take Redman. He doesn’t know we linked Cruz, the bombing. But he’s worried there. He’s making arrangements, transferring funds, shutting things down in a way if he can skate, he can open it all up again.
“He’s smarter than O’Brian,” Eve continued as they rode down to the main level.
“He’ll have solid ID, a solid plan, and a covered flight to a country without extradition.
Not what he wants. He wants what he has, what he believes he can take and have and keep.
So he’s going to be careful not to jump too fast, too far. ”
“Too late,” Peabody said, with more than a little glee.
“Yes, it is. Let Feeney know we’re out for the arrest, and to take over the op.”