Buch lesen: «Twin Targets»

Chapter One

Sydney Westlake made her move a half hour before the shift change, when the armed men who guarded the compound on Rocky Cliff Island would be at their least vigilant.

She hoped.

Tiberius was too smart to have a clockwork-regular schedule for something as important as security, so the armed forces that guarded the mansion and surrounding grounds worked randomly staggered shifts. After eleven months on the island, though—three of them as a prisoner—Sydney had found patterns in the randomness.

Today they were on what she’d dubbed “Schedule C,” which meant the guard post located directly between her quarters and the boat dock would change shifts at 1:40 a.m. God willing.

“You can do this,” she said to herself. “You have to do this. For Celeste.” Her sister’s name had become a mantra, something she held on to when her bravery faltered.

At first Sydney had told herself she was helping her ailing twin by staying on the island off the Massachusetts coast and working for Tiberius. She’d been trying to find a cure for the insidious genetic condition that was slowly killing Celeste. The obscenely large income being funneled into an offshore account was an added draw, allowing Celeste to stay in their wheelchair-friendly, restored Victorian in Maryland with a personal aide, rather than moving to an assisted-living facility of some sort. It had all seemed like a godsend when Tiberius first contacted her through his figurehead company, Tiberius Corp.

Now, though, she knew better. Tiberius wasn’t a philanthropist and he wasn’t a visionary. He was a monster, a sociopath, a self-professed businessman who wanted to use her discovery to do terrible things. Or rather, sell it to other criminals, who would use it as a smokescreen, hiding their identities while they did God only knew what.

She had to stop it from happening.

Trying not to betray her nerves, she crossed the high-tech lab Tiberius had ordered built and outfitted to her precise specifications. When she’d first arrived, the huge room, filled with the latest cutting-edge biotech equipment and analytical devices, had seemed like paradise. Now, it was a prison.

Sitting down at the bank of a half dozen networked computers, each of which controlled several of the big machines and analyzed the resulting data, she tried to block awareness of the security cameras blanketing the huge room, tried not to think about the men who were undoubtedly watching her image on-screen.

She’d done her prep work well. They’d gotten used to her returning to the lab around 10:00 p.m. and working until one or so in the morning. If she were lucky, all they would see now was their tame lab rat pulling up the last set of results and then powering down the big machines for the night.

In reality, she was executing two programs she’d managed to sneak onto the island. One was an uncrackable lockdown program that would freeze all of the lab computers and machines until she typed in a password. The other would shut down all of the networked computers on Rocky Cliff Island—including the ones running power and security—for the space of five minutes, and then go back into hiding, supposedly untraceable by all but the original programmer.

Celeste had developed the routines just before she’d gotten sick; she was the techie, Sydney the bio-geek. Together, they’d used to joke, they were a nerd superhero.

Now, those powers would be put to the test.

“Okay, kids, do your thing.” Sydney powered the lab computer down right after she’d fed the programs into the network. In ten minutes, the lights should go out. Then, the next time someone turned on one of the lab computers, the only thing they’d see on the screen would be a text prompt that read: Password?

If she made it off Rocky Cliff Island, she would use the password as leverage to keep her and Celeste alive long enough to grab the money out of her accounts and disappear. Then and only then, she would contact the authorities and tell them about Tiberius’s plans.

If she died trying to escape, she could only hope Tiberius or his tech experts would try three wrong passwords, whereupon the worm would corrupt every piece of data on the network and fry the computers.

If she lived and was recaptured, though…

She shuddered. She’d seen what happened to people who crossed Tiberius. The image of what he’d done to Jenny Marie, the softhearted cook he’d caught sneaking e-mails between Sydney and Celeste, would remain burned on Sydney’s retinas until the day she died. Unfortunately that day could be far sooner than she hoped, because crossing Tiberius was her only option right now. She couldn’t allow him to use her scientific discovery for the purpose he intended; she had to stop him. Which meant it was now or never.

Sydney’s fingers trembled as she hung her lab coat on its hook near the airlock-type passageway that was the only way in or out of the windowless lab. After pushing through the first of the pressurized doors, she touched the intercom button beside the second. “Out, please.”

She’d long ago learned not to bother making small talk with the guards—it only made them suspicious. Nowadays, she stuck to her routine and they stuck to theirs, little suspecting that she was studying them and waiting for her chance to escape. Or maybe they’d suspected all along, and she was doomed before she even began.

The door unlocked with a click. Sydney held her breath as it swung open automatically, then exhaled in relief when she saw the hallway was empty. If they’d sent an escort she would’ve had to scrap her plan, but the armed escorts had gotten fewer and further between with every week and month she behaved herself, as she’d pretended to cooperate with Tiberius and his mad plan.

Forcing herself to breathe evenly, she stepped out into the hallway and headed for her quarters, trying to look like all she had on her mind was a few hours of sleep. When she reached the gray, featureless door leading to her two-room suite, she pressed another intercom button. “In, please.”

The door clicked and opened, but instead of entering, she reached around the corner and fumbled for the thin wire she’d installed in the wall panel earlier that day, in the ten minutes she’d bought by “accidentally” blocking the view of the single camera in the main room of her suite by hanging a towel over the lens. By the time one of the guards had buzzed himself in without knocking, removed the offending item and groused at her for her continued sloppiness—which she’d carefully cultivated over the past few months—she’d done what needed to be done with the circuitry.

Concealed alongside the molding, the wire led to a simple gadget she’d Mickey Moused out of parts filched from the lab, using the diagram Celeste had sent via Jenny Marie. A sharp tug would form a bridge between the two main power lines in the wall beside the door, creating an obvious short and giving Tiberius’s engineers no reason to look further for the source of the electrical failure.

At least that was the theory.

“Here goes nothing,” she whispered, heart pounding. She checked her watch. Nine minutes fifty-five since she’d fed the kill program into the network. Fifty-six. Fifty-seven. As the door to her room started to close on its soundless mechanism, she yanked on the wire and jumped back.

There was a sizzle and a blinding flash in her room. Two seconds later the lights went out in the hallway, plunging her into utter blackness.

Sydney didn’t think. She ran.

She heard muffled shouts and pounding feet as she bolted along the hallway and slammed through the door at the end, where she’d jimmied the lock earlier that day.

She was out!

The night was cold and rainy, which she hadn’t anticipated. Sucking in a lungful of the wet, cutting air of springtime off the Atlantic coast, she plunged down a short cement staircase and bolted past a tarped-over swimming pool. Taking the direct route she’d mapped out during her daily guard-escorted walks around the compound, she headed for the dock at the bottom of the hill. The boats were little more than a collection of shadows against a misty backdrop of rain, dark against darker in the moonless, drizzly night.

She was halfway there when the backup generators kicked in, circumventing the primary network she’d crashed. Emergency lights flared to life and alarms whooped, the noise seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

Heart pounding, legs shaking with fear and adrenaline, Sydney ran for her life.

The drizzle had slicked everything with a thin layer of water, making the cement walkway slippery beneath her sneakers. The sharp wind cut through the jeans and light turtleneck shirt she’d worn in the climate-controlled lab. She hadn’t dared trigger the guards’ suspicions by dressing more heavily than that, and she paid for it as she pounded down a short incline to the water. Her teeth were chattering by the time she reached the first boat.

“Stop!” a voice shouted from behind her. Booted footsteps approached from the side at a run as the guards surrounded her. Gunfire chattered, kicking up stinging pellets of concrete directly ahead and to both sides of her.

They weren’t aiming to kill. Not yet, anyway.

Ignoring the warning shots, Sydney took two running steps across the dock and flung herself toward the nearest motorboat, which was one of the small, fast two-seaters the guards used for shoreline patrols. She untied the craft from the dock and clambered aboard, ducking with a terrified scream as bullets smacked into the side of the boat and peppered the interior of the craft.

Her heart rocketed in her chest and for a split second she wanted to give up, wanted to put her hands up and say, “You win, I was just kidding. Take me back to the lab.”

But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Still, her fingers shook as she punched the ignition button—her complacence had made the guards sloppy enough to leave the console unlocked, thank God—and the engine roared to life.

Coming from the other side of the island, past the cliff-side mansion, she heard the rotor thumps of Tiberius’s helicopter preparing to lift off. She wasn’t sure if he was evacuating or coming after her, but the sound added to the chaos of siren whoops and shouts as a dozen guards hit the dock, running flat out toward the other boats. The gunfire was silent for the moment, though, indicating that the security detail had orders to recapture her, not kill her.

She’d figured Tiberius would consider her far more of an asset than a liability…at least until it looked like she was going to succeed in escaping. Then he’d have his men start shooting for real.

Thank God for the rain. It would give her a layer of covering fog, and hopefully spoil their aim. The idea of being shot at—of being shot—terrified her, but she couldn’t turn back now.

She slapped the throttle forward, blessing the summer she and Celeste had spent with a foster family on Moose-head Lake, where they’d learned the basics of boating. The motorboat leapt forward, spraying the dock with a plume of water that made the guards shout and curse, sounds that were quickly lost beneath the roar of the motorboat engine and the growing thump of the helicopter.

Sydney glanced back, to where the mansion rose high on the crest of the island, a dark, hulking shadow that was barely visible in the fog. Then the chopper swung up and over the building. Its searchlights cut through the mist, and the bumps of rockets were clearly visible on either skid.

That gave Sydney her answer: Tiberius wasn’t fleeing. The bastard was coming after her.

Trembling with terror and adrenaline, breath sobbing in her lungs, she sent the little boat west, toward where the shoreline of northern Massachusetts ought to be. She couldn’t see any town lights through the wind-driven rain, which was coming down harder by the moment. The pellets stung her face and throat, quickly soaking through her light clothing and plastering the fabric to her skin.

“Come on,” she chanted. “You can do it. You can beat him.” She wasn’t sure if she was talking to herself or the boat, but the mantra made her feel a little better.

She almost couldn’t believe that she’d gotten this far. The Sydney Westlake of a year earlier hadn’t been able to fight for her university job or her project funding, hadn’t been able to stand up for herself in the face of her ex’s smear campaign, which had been the lowest of low academic politics.

But somehow, somewhere, she’d become the sort of woman who could plan an escape and make it happen.

Unfortunately, she’d also become a criminal, because whether or not Tiberius had coerced her—and he sure as hell had—she’d been the one to create the DNA code he considered his ultimate retail offering. Now it was up to her to make sure he never got to sell or use the engineered virus.

As she sent the boat into the gloom and the sounds of pursuit faded, hope guttered in her chest, pressing tears into her throat. She began to believe—when she hadn’t really believed before, no matter what she’d told herself—that she was really going to get out of this mess, that she and Celeste were going to be okay.

Then something splashed loudly behind her, followed by a hiss and the growing thump of helicopter rotors. She turned and froze in terror. The chopper was directly behind her, and there was a dark shape in the water, churning a white wake as it sped toward her. A torpedo.

Tiberius had apparently decided she was a liability.

No, she thought. Impossible. Then the searchlights pinned on the boat and the surrounding water, illuminating the plume of the deadly missile speeding toward her boat and proving that it wasn’t impossible at all. She was dead if she didn’t move, and move fast.

Screaming, Sydney flung herself into the sea. The shock of the cold saltwater drove the air from her lungs, but she didn’t have time to take another breath. She didn’t think. She dove and swam down and away from the boat, kicking and stroking for all she was worth.

Moments later, the world went orange and a booming shockwave of water slapped at her, tumbling her end over end, pummeling the breath from her lungs, dazing her and making her ears ring.

She hung motionless, utterly disoriented, feeling the thud of her heartbeat in her head, in her bones.

She was vaguely aware that she was rising toward the surface, and something inside her said that was a bad thing. She couldn’t seem to make her arms or legs obey her commands, though. She could only drift, longing for air as the water around her grew warmer, or maybe she got colder, she wasn’t sure.

This isn’t good, she thought, but couldn’t seem to get beyond the thought.

Then the heavy rumble of a boat engine cut through her daze, and her brain came back online with a jolt. Tiberius’s guards had arrived! Panic flared through her, chasing away the lethargy of shock, and she struck out wildly in the direction she thought was “up.” Moments later she breached the surface and sucked in a gasping lungful of air. Then she was swimming, flailing her arms and legs as hard as she could in an effort to get away from the motor noise as her heart hammered in her ears and panic spurred her on.

There was a splash behind her as at least one of the guards jumped in to grab her.

“No!” She swam harder, adrenaline propelling her onward when her muscles trembled with fear and fatigue, and the numbing cold of the water around her.

Her head pounded and there was a sharp pain above her eye, suggesting she’d been cut by waterborne debris. She banged into other pieces of debris as she swam, and the air was tainted with the odor of gasoline and smoke. She wanted to cough but she couldn’t spare the breath as she swam for all she was worth. She had to get away, had to—

A hand closed on her ankle, gripped hard and dragged her under.

Panic jolted and she screamed, then inhaled water and choked hard. She thrashed, fighting her captor even as she struggled to the surface and gagged, trying to get the water out of her lungs, the air in. The world spun and closed in on her, and her captor shifted his grip from her leg to her throat, clamping an arm across her upper chest while he struck out, swimming strongly with his free arm and kicks from his powerful legs.

“Let me go!” Sydney struggled against him, fouling his rhythm and dragging them both below, but he didn’t fight. He simply waited until they broke the surface, then shifted his arm to her throat and squeezed until her world went gray and spun to a pinprick.

Semiconscious, she went limp against him, barely breathing even after he eased up on the choke hold. Defeat hammered through her, alongside the sure knowledge of what Tiberius would do to her now.

He wasn’t just going to kill her. He was going to force her to help him sell a terrible opportunity to terrible people. Then he was going to kill her and Celeste both, very slowly. That was what he’d promised he’d do if she betrayed him, and she had every reason to believe the threat. She was going to die, and die horribly.

The realization spurred her to a last desperate attempt to escape. Knowing she had just one more chance, she waited until her captor reached the slick white side of a tall boat and called for others to reach down and grab her. At the moment he handed her off, she found another burst of energy and exploded, kicking and scratching at the two men who held her. They cursed and fought to hang on to her. They shouted at her, but she was too far gone to process the words.

She screamed over and over again until her voice went raw and then broke to sobs as they subdued her by grabbing her arms and legs and hanging on despite her furious struggles. When she finally went limp, they dragged her up and over the side, and dumped her onto the rain-slicked deck.

Moments later, the man who’d jumped in after her landed on the deck nearby, dripping and breathing hard.

Sydney curled herself into a protective ball, waiting for rough hands to tie her so she couldn’t get away while they hauled her back to her quarters on the island—or worse, directly to Tiberius.

Instead of rope, though, a heavy wool blanket landed atop her, cutting the sting of the cold air.

She whimpered and clutched at the blanket, pulling it over her head. After a minute or two, when the warmth started to come and the men hadn’t made another move, she peered out, dragging the blanket around herself as she struggled partway up on the rain-slicked deck.

Her teeth were chattering and her dark, shoulder-length hair was plastered over her forehead, covering her eyes. She slicked the strands away from her face, and when her vision cleared, she found herself only a few feet away from the man who’d pulled her from the ocean.

He was leaning back against the side of the gunwale a few feet away from her, wearing a coarse gray blanket like hers. His wet hair was short and dark, his features square and regular, his blue eyes assessing. Even soaking wet, he carried a definite aura of command.

She didn’t recognize him, but that didn’t mean anything. She’d only seen a few of Tiberius’s guards face-to-face, but had heard the footsteps of many more. What was strange, though, was that he was looking at her with utter calm, laced with an air of speculation. He seemed willing to wait for her to speak first, which didn’t make any sense.

Then her eyes locked on his blanket, which had something written on it in six-inch-high letters: U.S. Coast Gu—

It broke off where he’d tucked one side of the blanket beneath the other, but it was enough to have hope blooming viciously in her chest.

She hadn’t been recaptured after all.

She’d been rescued!

She gasped and looked at the other two men standing nearby. They were burly, curly-haired guys with the shared features of brothers and coast guard insignias on their jackets.

When she looked back at the man who’d saved her, he nodded in greeting, but didn’t smile. “I’m Special Agent John Sharpe of the FBI’s major crimes task force, and you’re on the coast guard cutter Valiant.” He paused, expression assessing. “Whether that’s good or bad news for you is going to depend on what you were doing on Rocky Cliff Island and why Tiberius wants you dead.”