Chronic fear f-2 Read online

  “Exactly.” Alexis wondered if she should tell him the rest. But his rages had become more sudden and uncontrollable over time, and she was increasingly reluctant to risk riling him.

  If he found out I’d been lying to him for the past year, there’s no telling what he might do.

  “Okay, maybe there’s another possibility,” Mark said. “I just can’t see Burchfield adding a couple of corpses to his resume. At least not until the primary’s over.”

  “Very funny. You do gallows humor so well.”

  “I’ve had lots of practice tying my own noose. So, is there anyone else from your closet of horrors that might be popping up now?”

  “You know about the other Monkey House subjects. Anita is struggling…” Alexis twisted her napkin in distress.

  “Is David Underwood still in Central Regional?” Mark asked, not allowing her to wallow.

  “Yeah.” The state’s largest hospital for the mentally ill was in nearby Butner, where Alexis had conducted some post-grad research. “He’s probably being blasted with psychosocial modalities, and they’re still doing pharmacological clinical trials for schizophrenia. Sort of like what Briggs was doing, except this is sanctioned and funded by the state.”

  “You think his shrinks found out about the Monkey House?”

  “Even if David remembered anything, I doubt if he could communicate it clearly. If they asked a question that hit too close to home, he’d probably start singing ‘Home on the Range.’”

  Mark shuddered, no doubt recalling the man’s incessant broken warbling after enduring years of Briggs’s sadistic research.

  “Okay, so Anita and David haven’t spilled the beans-or the pills. That leaves Wendy and Roland. Are they still together?”

  “Unless they lied, they headed for some peace and quiet in the Blue Ridge Mountains.”

  “I thought you and Wendy stayed in touch.”

  “We did for a while. I haven’t seen her since we had them over for dinner last year. But she quit calling a few months ago. Unfriended me on Facebook and everything. She even took down the website where she was selling her art.”

  “Not surprised. I figured Roland would turn into one of those survivalist nut jobs and head for the back country.”

  “You barely even know him.”

  “When you kill people together, you kind of learn a thing or two about each other.”

  “Nobody killed anybody. I don’t know why you hang onto that particular delusion when there are so many others to choose from.”

  “Because it makes me feel better about being a heavily armed lunatic,” Mark said.

  They’d had this argument so often that she might as well have read straight from the script. “Briggs and the others were killed by Burchfield’s bodyguard.”

  Mark pushed his plate away and stood, going to the window. “You remember it different every time, so there’s no point in talking about it now.”

  She studied his reflection in the glass as he looked out. The scar zigzagged from his mouth where he’d injured his face during their escape, later explaining that the pain from the self-inflicted wound had helped him focus. He was still handsome, maybe even more so than before, because his cuteness had taken on a hard, bad-boy edge. However, his eyes were dark and troubled, and occasionally they flared as if some black magic potion was bubbling away inside his skull.

  “You think they’re watching the house?” she asked.

  “Depends on who ‘they’ are. I don’t think Burchfield’s people would, but the CIA and FBI were watching him. That was a year ago, though. I don’t know what the hell’s going on now. I’m so far out of the loop I might as well start believing the Internet.”

  “There’s one other possibility. One of my research assistants was doing some work on frontal-lobe activity. She was measuring response to various stimuli, showing violent, erotic, romantic, or pastoral photographs and then noting the electromagnetic activity resulting from each.”

  “Let me guess. The neurons got busy when they saw the dirty pictures. Always works for me.” Apparently satisfied no one was approaching the house, Mark turned away from the window and went to the closet to check his firearms. It was a nervous compulsion he engaged in with increasing frequency. Alexis wondered if his decision to become a cop had merely been an excuse to pursue a higher grade of weaponry.

  “It wasn’t controversial, but if somebody got wind of it, they might have thought I was trying to revive Halcyon,” she said.

  “They can’t be that dumb. They know you know they’re watching. Therefore, they should be looking for the things they don’t see.”

  “Wow, you did spend too much time in Washington.”

  “In a way, we’d be lucky if these guys are federal,” Mark said. “At least then, they’d be reporting to someone, which would mean accountability up and down the chain.”

  “But what if it’s rogue? A terrorist group or a tech company? Maybe even CRO?”

  “Fuck CRO.” Mark pulled his Glock from the top shelf and checked the clip. “And terrorists aren’t that patient, whether they’re domestic or foreign. Part of their gig is to make a big splash. ‘Subtle’ doesn’t appear anywhere in the training manual.”

  “So they’re teaching homeland security at community college now?” She knew she was provoking him, but she was on edge, and in a sick way, mutual uneasiness had become a comfort zone. Once they fell into the routine, they both relaxed a little. Fear had become safe.

  Their marriage had remained solid through the crazy travel schedules and their hectic careers, but the past year had taken its toll. Alexis missed her romantic, goofy, ambitious husband, who had been replaced by this tight-jawed, nervous gun freak. The man she’d married had somehow become a stranger.

  One more casualty of the Monkey House.

  “Here’s all the homeland security you need.” He took a weapon from the closet that looked like a machine gun from a war movie and spoke in an instructional tone, as if she might actually have to use it one day. “This AR-Fifteen is the perfect weapon for home defense. Flip this little knob here-that’s the safety-and then just press the trigger as fast as you can. You have thirty bullets. This little baby can really clear a room.”

  The gun repulsed her, or maybe it was Mark’s sudden glee as he cradled it. “They wouldn’t be that brazen, would they? To break in here?”

  “They broke into your lab, right? And they didn’t find what they were looking for, because you aren’t hiding anything, right?”

  Alexis glanced away from his intense stare. “Right.”

  “So they’re not going to believe you have nothing to hide. That means they’ll keep looking.”

  “Why won’t they just leave us alone?”

  “Because Burchfield tried to buy me off,” Mark said. “Wanted me to join his security team or take an advisory role. ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,’ and all that.”

  “Yeah. And I’m sure my job offer from the CDC was just a coincidence, too. Maybe I should have taken it. Then I could be teaching teens about the dangers of mood-enhancing drugs.”

  “You know the problem with that? The word enhancing. There’s no way to talk about drugs without making them sound good.”

  Alexis knew about enhancements. Mark didn’t. She’d hoped her refinement of the original Halcyon formula would allow Mark to be able to turn his anger off and on. That was one of the big flaws in Briggs’s synthesis of Halcyon that had resulted in Seethe-Seethe turned the tap all the way open and every nightmare in Pandora’s box would bust free at once. And then only Halcyon could close the tap by suppressing memory and emotional response.

  She hadn’t mentioned the other possible source of the surveillance, because Mark didn’t know about Darrell Silver, the underground chemist she’d hired to develop her version of Halcyon. Silver had delivered the one batch in liquid form, saying he needed more time and more money, but he’d been arrested for dealing drugs two months ago. From the outside, it looke
d like just another dopehead getting busted, and Silver didn’t know anything about the drug’s provenance.

  But she didn’t know what records or chemicals he’d left lying around, or whether he was clever enough to use her as a bargaining chip if someone pressed. Some of his charges had been federal because he’d been trafficking across state lines. But despite his obvious genius, his basic personality was childlike and innocent, failing to comprehend why The Man would frown upon the act of spreading joy and escape from the square world.

  While Silver would never question her motives, he also might be tempted to brag about the fine craft of drug manufacturing. Brilliance rarely kept its illumination cloaked.

  But Silver’s loss meant she was alone. Despite her frantic research, and the measured doses of Halcyon she’d been slipping Mark, he was disintegrating, and she was afraid she’d lose him to Seethe forever.

  But Mark wasn’t just the test pool, he was her husband. She had to keep reminding herself of that fact.

  “It could be much worse,” she said. “I hate to think where we’d all be if Briggs had turned Burchfield loose with Seethe.”

  “Why haven’t you been honest with me?” he asked. He still held the AR-15, although he’d lowered it to his hip. She couldn’t read his expression. When he was Seething, his lip or eyelid would tremble, but at the moment he seemed utterly calm.

  And that was scarier than his blind rages.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You must be doing something, or nobody would bother raiding your lab.”

  “Mark, I told you I was done with that.”

  “And you got rid of all the Seethe and Halcyon? Not holding any back?”

  Why did he still blame her for sneaking some of the Halcyon pills from the Monkey House? She was sure the molecular compounds had beneficial uses. The chemicals themselves had done nothing wrong, because compounds didn’t possess morality. It was Briggs’s twisted use of them that was evil.

  Mark had forced her to flush the pills down the toilet after he’d discovered them hidden in her jewelry box, but he didn’t know about the single pill she’d given to Silver for analysis.

  “The doses you found were the last ones,” she said. “I promise.”

  The lie had mutated for so long that it now felt like the truth, and she wondered if a similar evolution had justified Sebastian Briggs in his sick research. But Mark wouldn’t understand her work, and he would never accept her help voluntarily. Especially if that help came in the form of Halcyon.

  But he also wouldn’t accept that he’d changed since the Monkey House. The Mark that had gone in had not come out.

  And his only hope-their only hope-rested in Alexis’s race to synthesize a better form of Halcyon, one that wouldn’t wipe his mind of all he’d been.

  But the race had been interrupted.

  Somebody knew.

  CHAPTER THREE

  God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

  Roland opened his eyes and, for the hundredth time since his last drink three years ago, wondered why God didn’t grant exemptions for control freaks, the cowardly, and the foolish. At times he’d been all three, and he still wasn’t sure he understood the Serenity Prayer and which things he could actually change without fucking them up. All he knew was that he was grateful to be here and to be sober enough to struggle with it.

  He was sitting in his rocker, laboring over a laptop, but the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountain evening stole his concentration. And his gaze kept roaming over to the painting Wendy was working on.

  Well, it roamed over Wendy a lot, too.

  She was wearing a thin cotton blouse, off-white and splotched with multi-colored stains, and Capri pants that accented her petite Asian shape. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she looked more like a teenager than a woman soon to enter middle age.

  “That’s pretty cool, sweetie,” Roland Doyle said.

  Wendy frowned and stepped back from the canvas, brush in hand. “Anything looks good in this light.”

  Which was true. It was the kind of sunset that cast the world in perfect pink, the ultimate rose-colored glasses. Flaming clouds billowed over the forest in the west while the coming bruise of night claimed its turf to the east. The wet, loamy aroma of the forest added to the magical dusk, and a more fanciful person might have imagined faeries and sprites would come spilling out at any moment.

  But Roland didn’t care for games of the mind. He’d played enough of them.

  “Personally, I’d go in for some cadmium yellow,” Roland said. “It’s getting a little bleak.”

  What he really meant was maybe she should try some new subject matter. For the past year, she’d been indulging in surreal and claustrophobic imagery, jagged and dark shapes full of menace. It was how she chose to deal with the Monkey House experience, but he hoped she would shut that door for good and paint over it with the thickest layer of black.

  He had, as best he could.

  But then he was the only one who seemed to remember much about it. For Wendy, it was bottled up and stored in a sick wine cellar of the soul, its fermented pulp turning to slow poison.

  “I’ve never had much use for critics,” Wendy said, a slight resentment riding under the humor. “I’ve got something to say. I just don’t know what it is yet.”

  Artists. God help ’em, because nobody else can.

  When you loved somebody, you had to put up with a few idiosyncrasies. And Wendy certainly had to endure her share. After all, she was married to a murderer.

  “You’d better clean up,” Roland said. “It’s getting dark. Sleep on it and I’ll bet you feel better.”

  She gave him a sly look with her almond-shaped onyx eyes. “I’d planned to sleep on you.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  He glanced at his laptop screen. He’d had to leave his job selling display advertising, but many of the same skills translated to the Internet. The only difference was he had to think smaller. Which was a relief, actually.

  Wendy wiped her brush and dipped it in a jar of soapy water to soak. She was in an acrylics phase, which put her in a better mood. Watercolors were too delicate and oils tended to go to mud when she vented her frustration and painted too rapidly.

  She crossed the porch and stood over him. “Husband. Did you ever think we’d get back together again?”

  He took her hands, although they still had flecks and smears of paint on them. “I knew it all along. We were meant to be together.”

  “That’s what men say just before they kill their spouses in a jealous rage.”

  He studied her face. Was she joking? Was she starting to remember? “No, sweetie. That’s ‘If I can’t have you, nobody can.’”

  She leaned forward and kissed him. “Okay, you’re the expert in obsession.”

  He stroked her hip and ran his fingers behind her. “If you were married to this, you’d be obsessive, too.”

  “Dinner, and then we can play OCD in bed.”

  “Tell you what. Let me fire off this e-mail and I’ll be right in.”

  “Sure. And two more e-mails arrive before you shut down, and then you get to deal with those. The ever-expanding inbox of client obligation.”

  “I promise. Really.”

  She swatted him playfully with her rag. “So much for moving to the mountains to get away from it all.”

  He tracked Wendy’s alluring rear as she crossed the covered porch and entered the screen door. Even after twelve years, he still liked the way she moved. My Tibetan tiger, he liked to call her. The tiger was also her sign of the Chinese zodiac, while her Western zodiac sign was Cancer. Both had claws.

  He was eager to polish off the last e-mail. As a freelance graphic designer, he’d found a niche in e-book design and intuitively grasped the differences in marketing on a computer instead of a bookshelf. He’d also taught himself formatting, and a
lthough he wasn’t sure where the technology was headed, he’d been able to carve out a sustainable small business. Which was fortunate, because he considered himself pretty unemployable now.

  Roland sent the sample file and was just about to close down when a new e-mail popped in. He winced and didn’t allow himself to read the subject line.

  You promised her.

  But it’s only one more little broken promise. What does it really matter on the scorecard of a marriage?

  The subject line said: “Every four hrs or else.”

  “What the fuck?” He didn’t even realize he’d spoken aloud.

  Spam. It had to be spam, a solicitation promising a Nigerian erection the size of a dictator’s bank account.

  The sender was “No-reply@ncs. cia. us. gov.”

  He knew he should log out immediately. Clicking could trigger a virus. Or exhume a past he’d nailed shut and painted black.

  “Hon?” Wendy called from inside. He’d already used up the window of good grace, and as a committed mate, he didn’t like forcing kitchen chores on her.

  Holding his breath, he opened the e-mail.

  It said simply: “We have a job for you, David Underwood.”

  “David Underwood” was the fake identity Briggs had foisted on Roland while tricking him back to Wendy and the Monkey House. It had turned out the real David was alive, although hopelessly traumatized, and Roland had burned the identification cards after their escape.

  The e-mail looked contrived. Why would the CIA send out e-mails? He doubted they even used e-mail.

  “Roland, these cucumbers don’t peel themselves,” Wendy said, with an edge of impatience.

  “Just a sec.” He Googled the CIA site, wondering if the agency tracked the ISP of every citizen who browsed it. A quick scan revealed that NCS stood for “National Clandestine Service,” which engaged in a murky mission called “human intelligence.” Especially surreal was the description, “We are accountable to the U.S. president, Congress, and the American taxpayer.”

  Yeah, sure you are. Except those three are on different sides in your little ideological war. And to think I helped fund your cheesy little website.