“Now, I realize we live in the age of the social justice warrior who thinks he can ferret out all the corruption in the world just by doing some Google searches, but the fact of the matter is this. While everyone points the finger at Wall Street and Goldman Sachs and the like, it’s companies like mine that actually shape the world, and we have this responsibility because people gave it to us. Because they expect to be relieved of every ache and pain and bad mood, as if being alive itself is a pathological condition, and someone, somewhere is responsible for fixing it. And we meet that need. We meet that need in the hopes that we can someday wrest enough financial gain from this neurotic hunger that we end up developing a cure for cancer. Or a drug that stops strokes once and for all. Or a drug that allows people at risk of violence or abuse to defend themselves in a competent, focused, and effective manner. Something that’s truly important, not just easily marketable.
“That’s my job, in a nutshell. That’s my responsibility, and it was my father’s before he left it to me. And if you decide to wash your hands of all of this, then Project Bluebird is dead forever. I’ve got no more to give to it. And that’s fine. But that also means Dylan Cody or Dylan Thorpe or Noah Turlington or whatever he chooses to call himself tomorrow has no more to give me or my company except dangerous and unacceptable risks. And I can’t have that. I can’t have that at all.”
The pictures still stare up at her from the spread of pages on her lap: the boy with the murdered mother and the mad scientist he became.
“Why tell me?” she asks. “Why make me responsible for his life? Why not just deal with Dylan the way you want to?”
“If you do decide to work with us, I don’t want to jeopardize our new relationship. For all I know, you might have developed a real attachment to him.”
“You certainly seem to have one.”
“I’ll show you some footage of what happened to the test subjects in our labs. That way you’ll appreciate the magnitude of the danger he placed you in.”
“Or you could admit that you just want him dead, but you can’t bring yourself to do it unless you use me as an excuse.”
“I’d dismiss that as glib if you didn’t speak from experience. After all, you’re the one who used me and my surveillance and Zypraxon as an excuse to hunt down a serial killer who reminded you of the people who killed your mother.”
“I didn’t do it for revenge.”
“Coulda fooled me, Burning Girl.”
“I’m not interested in being part of your revenge, either.”
“That’s not what it is, but I can certainly understand why you’d see it that way.”
“What is it then?”
“Management.” He sucks in a deep breath. “That said, this isn’t a decision you need to make tonight, or the next night, or the night after that. Take your time. You’ve been through a great deal these past few days. But, Charlotte, right now I need your blood.”
Maybe this was his strategy, to sideline her so she’d offer up her arm without a struggle even though she’s currently capable of snapping his neck with one hand. It works. She gives them her left arm; the wounds from where she tore out Pemberton’s IVs are still fading on her right.
Mark, the spectacled former nurse, springs into action, opening the briefcase, revealing the vials in their foam slots. Only when he brings the syringe close to her flesh does she notice that his hands shake slightly and his nostrils flare with each breath, as if he were preparing to inject a growling tiger.
Once her blood starts to fill the vial, Cole knocks on the partition behind his head. The chopper banks again, and they start flying back toward the rivers and lakes of twinkling lights beyond the dark mountains.
By the time they start to descend, Mark Hetherington has filled five vials.
When he removes the last one, she glances out the window. They’re close to the Pala Casino Resort; it rises like a gatehouse to the network of mountain valleys they just took off from. Their landing spot is the empty parking lot of an unfinished shopping mall.
Approaching on the nearest service road now are two large black SUVs she recognizes from outside the vineyard’s gate, and Luke’s Jeep in between them. As the three cars pull in to the lot, she’s surprised to see Luke and Marty emerge from the back seat of the first SUV and not the Jeep. Apparently Luke’s vehicle has been commandeered by more of Cole’s windbreaker-clad Glock aficionados, like the guys now fanning out across the perimeter of their impromptu helipad.
The man driving Luke’s Jeep hops out, then disappears into the back seat of the SUV in front. Whatever’s about to happen, it’s going to be a quick transfer, and as the chopper’s runners come to rest on the asphalt, she realizes most of the men and the firepower are still up at Pemberton’s place.
But her people are all here: Luke, Marty, Brasher, Rucker, and the three guys who were supposed to be at the surveillance post. They don’t look traumatized, just shaken and confused—like students evacuated from a school after a phony bomb threat.
The Windbreakers, as she now thinks of them, are falling back and piling into the SUVs.
Ed Baker slides open the door to the passenger compartment, allowing in a blast of air as the blades roar by overhead. This time, she realizes, the helicopter won’t be shutting down.
“I’ll be in touch, Charlotte,” Cole says. “Not with quite this much fanfare, of course. But soon. I would offer you my hand but . . .”
She reaches out and grips the edge of the door, careful not to bend the metal. In her other hand, she holds the file.
“Oh, and Charley?”
She looks at him.
“In another few hours, Frederick Pemberton is going to tell a very strange story to the authorities. We’ll do everything we can to make sure they don’t believe it. But I wouldn’t stick around if I were you.”
She wants to ask him more questions, but she doubts he’ll give her the whole truth.
“You and Dylan make a great couple,” she says. “It’s a shame you want him dead.”
No sooner has she stepped from the helicopter than Baker slides the door shut behind her, and suddenly it’s lifting into the air over her head, the downdraft plastering her hair to one side of her face. But of course her grip, magnified by Zypraxon, is more than enough to keep the contents of the file from blowing out of her hand. In time with the helicopter’s departure, the two SUVs speed back onto the service road, leaving Luke’s Jeep all by itself several yards away, its doors standing open.
Luke is walking toward her. Too fast.
“Wait,” she says.
“No,” he says.
Suddenly his arms are around her.
“If you can’t hug me without crushing my spine, then just don’t hug back,” he whispers.
She leaves her arms at her sides. She leans into him. She can do that, right? Just a little lean. A little movement that allows her to shift some of the weight off her heels and onto the balls of her feet, to breathe deeply for the first time in hours.
For the first time in days.
For the first time in weeks.
She blinks against his chest, sees the rest of the group headed toward her.
“I’m gonna wait if that’s all right, darlin’,” Marty says, “maybe another hour and a half or so. I’m not quite as brave as him.”
She smiles, nods against Luke’s chest. She’s allowed her eyes to drift shut again when she hears one of the other guys say, “We need to get her some new jeans.”
IV
It’s been two weeks, and this is what the world thinks happened that night.
They think the Mask Maker, aka Frederick Pemberton, was rearranging equipment in his surgical lab of horrors when he accidentally pushed one of the operating tables into the vacuum pump chamber he used to create his masks, knocking the giant chamber onto its side. They think he almost pinned himself underneath it, breaking several bones in the process. They think he was so afraid a trip to the hospital would expose the source of his injuries, he chose instead to inject himself with a powerful pain medication until he could figure out what to do. And because he was in so much pain, he made the mistake of dosing himself with one of the tranquilizers he used to subdue his victims, knocking himself unconscious in the process.