“Souk injected her with XT7 four and a half years ago, and needless to say, she hasn’t been the same since.”
Oh, hell, no.
“I thought Shoko was the only woman he ever juiced.” And she’d turned out so demented as to be almost worthless. Her only value had been as a psycho-bitch pet for Erich Warner, one of the few men in the world who could have afforded to feed her. The woman had come out of Souk’s lab with some very twisted appetites.
“She’s not like Shoko,” Scout said. “Not at all. She lost her memory completely, just like Con, but she’s gotten a lot of it back, working with a Dr. Brandt at Walter Reed.”
“Walter Reed Medical Center?” He couldn’t believe this conversation. “Forget it. The place is part of the system,” he said, dismissing the whole thing out of hand.
Con had been part of the system when he’d been sold. Randolph Lancaster had his hands in everything in Washington, D.C., from the State Department, to the CIA, to the Pentagon, and probably to Walter Reed. He was a power broker at the very highest levels of government, and most of the people whose strings he pulled never even felt the tug. He was that much a part of the status quo.
“I think we need to consider our options,” she said, still with the phone in her hand.
Not that option.
“I know they didn’t buy you, Scout.” The girl couldn’t be bought. “So what did they do to make you think that giving him up was in any way the best thing for him? I’m just damned curious.” And he just didn’t damn believe it.
“Convinced me,” she said. “That they could help him. Red Dog is proof. You know the kind of headaches Con gets. She doesn’t get those anymore. And the pain and the shakes? Hers are almost completely under control. You’ve seen Con. You know what he goes through sometimes, why he takes all those pills. I’ve just been guessing at it these last few months, but you’ve probably known. Known he’s dying.” She stopped to take a breath. “And you didn’t tell me.”
Her words fell on him like a five-hundred-pound weight.
Guilty.
He rolled the window on the Buick down a little farther, tried to get a little more air into the car.
Down at the motel, Red Dog had disappeared around the corner of the building, and the Angel from Hell had his ear to the door, listening. All he’d hear was the television they’d left on.
After a second or two, the guy moved back from the door, standing off to the side, up against the brick wall for the same reason Con and Jack had chosen the dump in the first place. It was old and built solid. The whole damn building was brick, in desperate need of a major remodel on the inside but built to last on the outside.
Travis knocked and said something, and Jack could just imagine what—something like “This is the manager. We’ve got a fire in the lobby, and the fire department wants us to evacuate,” or “So sorry. This is the manager, and somebody just broke a window out on your car.”
Jack might have fallen for either one of those, especially the car window, especially in this neighborhood.
But Travis didn’t get any action off the ruse, because Con was hell and gone somewhere in this damn city, and Jack was sitting up here on this hill, doing his best to breathe in some fresh air and avoid the subject at hand. Con dying was more than he could bear, truly, let alone share with someone, even Scout—especially Scout.
Red Dog came back around the building then, no doubt signaling Travis that there was no way out the back of Room 107. In many old motels, the bathroom had a window that opened out the back, but not at the Star.
With the two of them together, the entering of the room went very smoothly. Red Dog lined up with Travis, and one of them must have electronically scrambled the lock. Jack couldn’t see which one, but Travis opened the door and entered first, his gun drawn and ready to go, go, go.
It was a short trip inside. Jack and Con were a pretty tidy crew, and all the really good stuff, like the laptop and the laser microphone, was in Jack’s backpack in the back of the Regal.
In less than five minutes, the two had looked their fill and