THE FLENSE: China: (Part 3 of THE FLENSE serial) Page 9

  He waited with his driver, the car's engine idling quietly, and they didn't speak.

  It wasn't a huge house. Certainly not ostentatious. Gray stone and ivy, a Mediterranean roof. If he didn't know otherwise, he would have guessed the structure claimed somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty rooms, perhaps eight bedrooms and nearly as many baths. In actuality, it was closer to thirty, though many of those rooms he hoped were empty, or at least unused. In any case, the search was going to take quite a bit longer than the Manhattan apartment had. And that was assuming there weren't any outbuildings. The plans hadn't shown any on the grounds, but he asked his driver, Nate, to double check while he was inside making his own rounds.

  The gate suddenly began to swing open, the motor rumbling and the chain rattling. It sounded in need of some maintenance.

  "They're in," Nate announced, and he guided the car through the stone walls and between the untidy hedges.

  The whole place is in need of maintenance, Alvin thought, glancing at the long grass on the lawn and the fallen leaves. A feeling of gloom settled over him.

  They approached the front door and slowed to a stop beside a man he didn't recognize. The search team consisted of the same members he'd used in Manhattan, but he'd also arranged to be met by someone with familiarity with the place.

  Nate rolled his window down. "You the local guy?"

  The man leaned over and offered his hand. "Alain Champlain. Plaisir."

  "This is Mister Cheong."

  "Bonjour. Bienvenue chez les Chèvrefeuille. You can pull around the side. Zere is a covered arbor out of sight from all ze roads. If we need to leave in a hurry, zere is a separate staff gate. I have a man to keep watch out front; another in back. Anyone comes, zey will override ze gates until we're clear. But I don't think we need to worry. I have been watching ze place since two days and have seen no one coming or going."

  Cheong stepped out of the car, then mounted the stairs to the porch. After shaking off the mist from his overcoat, he entered the house. He stopped in the middle of the foyer to look around, wondering whether to remove his gloves or not. He decided to keep them on.

  Like the apartment in Manhattan, the house was sparsely furnished and minimally decorated. A large tapestry, old by the looks of it, covered the wall beside the stairs. A piano sat beneath the overhanging balcony landing. A pair of ground floor hallways, one to either side, led toward the back of the house. A kitchen was off the left hall, as well as the pantry, bathrooms, and servants' quarters. To the right were a large dining hall, parlor, offices, and storage rooms.

  Other than a few small runners, there was no carpeting that he could see. And besides the hanging tapestry, the only other wall hanging was a single large mirror mounted on the back wall of the foyer. It was encased within a wide, gold frame with a gaudy floral design. No portraits or photographs anywhere. No artwork. No plants, whether real or otherwise.

  His eyes were drawn naturally up the stairs to the second story, to the double doors set into the middle of the landing and the master bedroom, which he presumed belonged to Missus de l'Enfantine. The doors were both open, and he could hear someone already rummaging around inside, opening cabinets and drawers, shifting boxes, checking behind doors.

  He wandered down the hallway that ran along the left front of the house to what he knew from the plans was the library. Two men were inside the large room, one working on the computer, the other sifting through papers and books. He watched them for a while, taking in the tall shelves and the tomes, many of which were behind glass. The room included items of a personal nature here, decorations and trinkets, though he couldn't dispel the feeling that they had lost whatever significance they once might have held. There was no obvious sign of neglect, and yet the room had the distinct air of neglect to it.

  He shook his head at himself, then left the men to their jobs and headed back toward the middle of the house again.

  On the opposite side of the foyer was a similar hallway. At its end was, according to his notes, the butler's study.

  "Mister Cheong?"

  He looked up at the man standing at the top of the landing, his latex gloved hands resting lightly on the balustrade. Jaffe was his name. He looked perplexed.

  "Can you take a look at something up here?"

  Cheong took in a deep breath and bit back his irritation. The men knew he had a routine for such things and didn't appreciate having his concentration broken for trivial matters. He turned and headed for the stairs.

  "What is it?"

  Jaffe gestured toward the master bedroom, and they entered.

  The bed was unmade, and several items of clothing littered the floor between it and the closet.

  Cheong's attention was drawn to the computer workstation. It was clearly a homemade setup, a Rube Goldbergian monstrosity of unmatched parts brought together and connected by cables of all different colors. A man was sitting at one of three keyboards in front of the left hand-most monitor and shaking his head in frustration. He was clearly having a difficult time figuring out how to log in. Two of the screens were filled with the same solid, unvarying sea of blue. The last was black but for a blinking cursor.

  This is where she writes? Cheong wondered. It seemed excessive for a reporter.

  "The closet, sir," Jaffe said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "The closet. It's all men's clothing. She doesn't appear to use this room. Or if she does, not as her bedroom."

  Cheong frowned. "David Eitan's then? From before the separation?" Or after?

  Jaffe shrugged. "There are some carry-out food containers lying around — there on the dresser, for example — some no older than a few days. Nothing more recent, though. Has the other team located him yet, the ex?"

  "Not ex," Cheong muttered. "They're just separated. Apparently. And no, they're still looking for him in DC." He glanced at the clothes on the floor, overcome by a passing sense of déjà vu. Then at the bed, which was queen-sized. Both pillows appeared to have been used, and the sheets on both sides were rumpled. "No women's clothes?"

  "No, sir."

  "Maybe they're not as estranged as we think."

  "That would explain why they haven't been able to locate him— if he's here in France, that is."

  Cheong nodded. Separated, but together; together, but not together? Something didn't seem right, but what it was, he didn't know. "Okay," he said, exhaling in frustration. "Keep looking."

  He stepped from the room and paused at the top of the landing. Damn whiskey, he thought, looking dizzily down at the first floor landing. He stepped quickly away from the railing, even though it reached up to his chest and there was no way he could fall. But he was a short man. A taller person might topple over it if they weren't careful.

  Feeling sick to his stomach, he descended the stairs and wandered out to the front porch until one of the men told him to come back inside before he was seen.

  Sixty-two minutes after arriving, his team gathered in the foyer for the debriefing. As with the earlier search, additional medication bottles had been found confirming the idea that Angelique de l'Enfantine was being treated for a chemical imbalance affecting her mind. The proof only troubled Cheong all the more, as he could find no record of what exactly that condition might be.

  "I was finally able to access the upstairs computer and cloned it," the technician reported. He had been new to the team in New York, and Cheong couldn't for the life of him remember the man's name— Edwards or Edmund or something. "All the files are deeply encrypted, so it'll take us a while to crack them open and see what's in them."

  "Doesn't that seem a bit strange?" Cheong asked.

  "Edleman, sir," the man replied, sensing his boss's hesitation. "We know her father was a security expert. The systems he created were designed to prevent hacking. It might be—"

  "Gaétan de l'Enfantine died almost six years ago. I may be wrong, but the setup upstairs didn't look that old. And the laptop in the library wasn't secure."

  "
No, sir."

  "Why encrypt one but not the other?"

  "I don't know, sir."

  Cheong nodded. "Notify me the very moment you're able to crack open those files."

  There were no further surprises.

  Alvin Cheong returned to the car and belted himself in. It would take his people several more days to carefully review the thousands of additional documents they had photographed, probably longer to crack open and sift through the computer files.

  "Did you find anything?" he asked Nate as they exited the property and headed back to the airport.

  "There's a guesthouse, but it looks like the roof caved in a while ago. Years, maybe. It's overgrown with ivy. Nothing retrievable. Found a small shed with some gardening tools and a cardboard box with some old medical textbooks in them. There's a garage with a bunch of old machinery." He shrugged.

  Alvin Cheong turned his face toward the window. He felt like he was chasing ghosts. Or, worse yet, phantoms. Why had 6X picked her of all people to dig into the events his team considered high risk? What was so special about the woman?

  And was he right in worrying about her mental condition, whatever it might be?

  "One last thing, sir," Nate went on. "You'll be happy to hear that I located the younger brother."

  Cheong looked up, startled. "Really? Where?"

  "In the back corner of the property, there's a thick copse of willow trees. Found four plots and three tombstones. His name was on one."

  Chapter Fifty Two

  "Let me out!"

  Angel pounded on the tempered glass with her fists, but they simply bounced off without breaking it. The door rattled against the broom handle, snapping it against the cabinet's aluminum frame. It, too, wasn't going to break, and she couldn't get the door open enough to slip her hand through to slide it out of the handles.

  The cabinet was just tall enough to allow her to stand slightly hunched over, but it wasn't sufficiently deep to give her any leverage to push on the door with her feet or ram it with her shoulder. She tried anyway, wedging her body into the corner and pushing with all her fading strength. But it was no use. The glass was too tough, the cabinet too well built, and the broom handle too unyielding.

  She had no idea how much time had passed since Aston left. It might have been five minutes or twenty-five. And she was getting a cramp in her back from not being able to sit or completely straighten herself up.

  "Let me out!" she screamed, and pounded on the glass again. "Anybody?"

  Her eyes strayed to the syringe on the floor at her feet, a small pale tube in the red glow, and for a moment she wondered what would happen if—

  No! her mind screamed at her. What Aston had proposed was impossible. He was taunting her, nothing more. The man was cold, heartless. Sick. She had angered him with her defiance, and he was getting his revenge on her by offering false hope. But there was no way it would work. How could it in so little time? How could it even if she had all the time in the world? No one could possibly survive being burned to death.

  And yet . . . . What if—

  Focus, Angel! There is no surviving an inferno, so you have to get out before those devices go off!

  She pushed feebly at the door, then sent a flurry of ineffectual kicks and punches at it. How could anyone be so cruel that they would do this to anyone? How could anyone think any of this was okay? She just couldn't understand it.

  "Help me," she begged. She lowered her head, crumpled against the confines of the cabinet, and began to weep into her hands. "Help me."

  * * *

  It was the sound of a siren which pulled her out of the pits of her despair. A siren which rose and fell, then faded away into nothingness.

  Angel lifted her head away from the wetness in her hands and opened her eyes.

  Nothing but complete darkness greeted her.

  Confusion gripped her mind. She was dead. But how could she be? She hadn't remembered burning to death. Had she used the nanites? Had she injected herself?

  You're not dead.

  Then why couldn't she see?

  Open your eyes.

  "They are open," she mumbled, and the sound of her voice was strange, closed, and she realized she was still inside the glass cabinet. She waved her hand in front of her face, saw nothing. She felt the air moving on her cheek.

  "The power's out."

  No lights. The fan of the refrigeration unit had gone silent. Nothing but darkness and quiet.

  So the fire had started. It had reached the electrical box and blown the breaker, cutting off the power. That explained why she couldn't hear the siren anymore. Without power, it had died.

  She leaned halfheartedly against the glass door and yelped in surprise when it opened, tumbling her to the floor of the inner room. "Who's there?" she cried, throwing her arms blindly over her head to protect them.

  Cool, fresh air brushed her cheek, carrying on it the faint coppery smell of blood. No hint of smoke, which confused her. She felt around the floor and recoiled when her fingers encountered a puddle of something thick and sticky. She eventually made it to one corner of the room. Her hands climbed the glass, squeaking in the silence. Her ears filled with the throb of her heart beating and the harsh whisper of her blood rushing through her head. How could it be so dark?

  And who let you out?

  "Norstrom? Are you there?"

  She got to her feet and turned right, though she wasn't sure which way the door was. The fall had turned her all around. She slid her foot to the side and walked her hands over the cabinets. One door, two.

  Three.

  And there was another corner. She kept going.

  Stopped when she heard something.

  What had it been? The sound of a breath perhaps? A footstep? Her lungs cried out for air as she held the back of her hand over her mouth to stifle her sobs. Who's there? Who's there? She didn't dare make a sound.

  But all was quiet again. No noise reached her ears. She was as deaf as she was blind.

  Moving again, not dragging her feet but lifting them now so she didn't—

  Something touched her hand, brushed over her arm. She drew back, stumbling over her own feet and losing her balance. The broom crashed to the floor with a clatter that sounded like an explosion in her ears. Her breath was a gravel avalanche.

  And then she heard a sigh underneath it.

  Someone is here!

  "Oh god," she whispered, scrambling again to her right, not caring if she was being quiet or not. She crashed into a wall. "Oh god! Please."

  And suddenly there was nothing. She fell into the opening, caught herself, then slammed into the bench in the nurse's office. Her arms sprawled over the surface, knocking into the plastic boxes Aston had placed there. Bottles tumbled out, spilling and rolling across the bench. One exploded as it hit the floor on the other side. Another dropped without breaking.

  Why didn't he take them with him?

  She lurched to her right, in the direction of the hallway, her mind only vaguely aware of the danger of fire outside.

  Don't open the door! she screamed silently at herself. But she couldn't help herself. She reached for where she thought the handle was and again fell into the emptiness of the hallway.

  She landed on something hard and soft and—

  A body!

  Her knuckles burned against the thin carpet. She spun around, saying Norstrom's name. But then her fingers closed over the rigid surface of Aston's cane, and she knew that it was him, and she couldn't stop herself, couldn't stop them from finding the face of that grotesque man, confirming that, yes, it was him it's him IT'S HIM OH MY GOD OH MY GOD WHAT'S HAPPENING?

  Something was sticking out of his throat, just beneath his chin. Stickiness. Blood. He was bleeding. He was—

  Dead! He's dead. Keep going. Get out!

  On hands and knees now, feeling, crossing the hallway. No body where Norstrom had died, just a sticky wetness, the fibers in the carpet stiffening. Where was he? Had he somehow survived? Had
he been the one to let her out?

  "Norstrom!" she screamed. "Norstrom!"

  Why would he have just removed the broom? Why would he leave her inside?

  Oh, god! Had that been him inside the room with her? He was hurt!

  Turning around, she found the glow of the timer on the incendiary device, too dim to illuminate anything but itself: 3:12 . . . .

  3:11

  3:10

  Three minutes before the bombs went off!

  A sound down the hallway spun her around again. The brush of skin against fabric, a foot dragging along the carpet. "Who's there?"

  3:04

  3:03

  A choking gurgle. A shuffle.

  "Norstrom?"

  A wet breath. The fetid stench of rot.

  "We need to get out of here. Norstrom?"

  What if it's not him?

  She spun back toward Aston's corpse and ran her hands over that misshapen bulk, over the mounds of cooling fat on his cheeks, his open eyes, mouth, the greasy hair. His flabby neck. Cooling skin. Sticky blood. Or vomit. Something thick and viscous. Over the barrel chest. Patting, patting.

  A gasp behind her made her duck instinctively, pressing her face against the lifeless chest, forcing the stale air from his collapsed lungs. A moan burped through the dead man's lips. Blood gurgled from the wound in his neck and dripped thickly onto the floor.

  Something was there in the hallway with her.

  The dark man it's the dark man it's—

  "Where is it?" she whimpered.

  Hands sunk into the mounds of cooling flesh, swept across, down his legs, checking pockets. Frisking. She could feel the presence in the hallway getting closer, could hear its strangled breath. It was—

  Jamie!

  —the dark man. It was the dark man!

  She slid her hand beneath Aston's lower back until her fingers hit the metal of the pistol. She tried to pull it out, but it wouldn't come.