Page 28

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FIVE

KARLIN

B y the time her alarm began to sound, Karlin was already awake.

She allowed her eyes to remain closed for several pleasant seconds before climbing out of bed and silencing the noise. For the first time in what felt like forever, she’d gotten more than enough sleep, and a burst of fresh energy seemed to fill her limbs.

After she and Axel had returned to the retreat site yesterday, they’d been relieved to see that the rest of the guests were doing as well as could be expected.

Bajwa, however, was in a sour mood.

The Senera higher-ups had advised him to postpone their next DX8 dose by a full day, supposedly to allow everyone to rest after the ordeal with Destiny. Of course, this meant twenty-four hours of lost time and data.

For her part, Karlin had taken a long nap and caught up with office work, though she could admit to herself that she’d spent more time than she should have thinking of Axel and what he was doing to pass the day without her.

Every time she’d have to read some boring report, her thoughts would wander back to Bajwa’s Jeep, the sun shining softly at the window, and Axel’s warm chest pressed against her cheek.

There were worse ways to get lost while catching up on emails, and the day had passed relatively quickly.

By now, though, in the bright light of a new morning, she was eager to finally get some answers.

Most of their first week at the retreat had flown by, and in another week, Axel would be gone and she’d be on her own. Aside from the small fact that she needed his help to figure out how to stop Senera, she could no longer deny that she would miss the pleasant distraction of his flirting.

Even if she couldn’t bring herself to believe it would ever be anything more.

She forced thoughts of him from her mind as she left her cabin and headed toward the lab to get a head start before breakfast.

As she made her way down the familiar dirt trail, however, she heard something.

She froze where she was, glancing out into the desert and seeing nothing but a few cacti and a patch of dead grass. But she did hear the noise again, slightly more quietly this time.

“Creepy, aren’t they?” a voice from over her shoulder announced.

She whirled around, her heart leaping into her throat, but it was only Lily and Cora standing in the path behind her.

“It’s just coyotes, honey,” Lily continued, shaking her head in the direction of the now silent desert. “But boy, do they ever sound human.”

Cora smiled. “Totally creepy, but I’ve kind of started to like hearing them. They’re beautiful creatures.”

“Right,” Karlin said, forcing a little laugh as the two women fell into step beside her.

She decided she may as well skip the lab and head straight over to the dining hall.

Her work could wait a little while longer, and at the moment, she suddenly felt very glad not to be alone out here in the quiet of the early morning.

“So,” she said after a moment, “have either of you heard anything about the cult rumors that are going around in Amarillo?”

“Ha!” Lily said, tossing her silvery braid over one shoulder. “My brother works with the sheriff. They’ve searched high and low for this so-called cult. If there was anything to it, they’d know it by now.”

Karlin thought the same thing, and yet, something about the woman’s words gave her pause, but at the moment, she couldn’t remember what it was.

“There’s nothing to it but wild desert stories, that’s all,” Lily continued. “It’s boring up here. What else are people gonna do but talk? They’ve been at it since before I was born.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Cora cut in. “Those girls really did go missing.”

“Oh, sure. But that doesn’t mean they got snatched up by some cult. More likely it was a gang. Or maybe a pimp. Something more ordinary, anyway.”

“But maybe there’s a reason these stories keep popping up,” Cora argued. “I read about the history of this place. There used to be these people here called the Antelope Creek phase Indians, but they disappeared. To this day, no one knows what happened to them.”

Lily gave Karlin a knowing look out of the corner of her eye. “I did entire classes on the local history of this area in college, and you’re half right, I guess. No one knows exactly why those Indians died out–”

“I know I’m right!”

“Now, hold on,” Lily said firmly, stopping for a moment where she stood and gesturing toward the expanse of the desert that surrounded them.

“Look at this place. It’s a harsh climate, and it has been for a very long time.

There are all sorts of logical reasons that those people might have disappeared. ”

“Sure,” Cora said brightly. “A portal to another dimension. Or maybe alien contact.”

Karlin resisted the urge to laugh out loud.

Portals? Aliens? It was completely insane. Once again, she found herself wondering about the rigors of Bajwa’s patient selection process.

Lily did laugh, though not unkindly. “It might be fun to speculate about the sci-fi stuff, but I can almost guarantee that it’s something mundane that brought the Antelope Creek phase to their end. Resource scarcity, a warring tribe, a mass illness–there are all kinds of rational possibilities.”

“So why don’t they know what happened?”

“Because it was over five hundred years ago and most of the evidence is gone. No conspiracy required.”

Cora considered this, finally shrugging her shoulders. “You’re no fun, Lily.”

Lily grinned at her. “I am old, Cora. I don’t know what you’re expecting.”

Karlin let the two women pull ahead of her, following them in silence as they continued to talk and joke with one another.

She couldn’t help but to look over her shoulder one last time, her eyes searching the horizon as the light continued to grow brighter. She could hear only the breeze now, interrupted by the occasional chirping of a meadowlark.

She could almost believe the sounds had never been there at all.

Almost.

ASHER

Asher awoke with a jolt, sitting up straight in bed.

It took a couple of seconds for his brain to catch up with his body and to realize that the terrible air raid siren he’d been hearing in his dream was, in fact, a ringing phone.

His bleary eyes settled on the dresser on the other side of the cabin. He was so used to reaching into his pocket for his iPhone that he’d actually forgotten he’d been given access to a corded phone for the duration of the retreat.

“Hello?” he answered as politely as he could, in case it was Ned, Bajwa, or, best of all, Karlin.

Not that she’d ever trust a phone owned by Senera, if she was paranoid enough to believe that her cell phone could be bugged.

“Yo, bro!” the deep voice on the other end of the line boomed.

It was his brother, Ben, and he suddenly wished he’d picked up with one of his usual, more colorful, greetings.

Alas, his opportunity had slipped away.

“Hey, what’s up? Finally someone remembers I’m still alive,” he said, releasing a yawn.

“I remembered,” Ben retorted. “I’ve been busy. I’ve been digging into this Dr. Daman Bajwa character.”

Now, that was something. Asher twisted the gray cord between his fingers, waiting.

“His history is a lot more complicated than it seems on his Senera website bio, that’s for sure.

He’s spoken publicly about his family history in business back in India.

His father was some fancy-pants businessman, super rich, all the rest. But as it turns out, the story didn’t end there.

Apparently, dear old dad lost the entire family fortune and his good name due to the dot-com crash, and in particular, his own reckless spending.

Daman Bajwa’s father’s last name is actually Kapoor.

But Daman Jr. wanted a fresh start in America, with no baggage for anyone to Google.

“First, though, he had to get to the United States. To bring in the money to get himself through an international grad school program, he got involved with some seriously shady business dealings back in the old country.”

“Shady how?”

“He was never convicted of anything personally, but he helped manage a call center that was exposed as a front for insurance fraud. Oh, and did I mention they specialized in targeting the elderly in North America?”

“That’s insane.”

“Yep. And of course, after all of that, he legally changed his last name to Bajwa.”

Asher’s mind was racing. “No way. I wonder if Karlin–my client, I mean–knows anything about this.”

“I highly doubt it,” Ben said proudly. “Took me a ton of digging to get this info. I doubt even the big bosses at Senera Pharmaceuticals would have been willing to take on the risk of employing him if they knew.”

“Well, it explains some things. Mainly, why Bajwa is so desperate to be the pioneer behind DX8. It’s the chance at redemption he’s probably been looking for his entire life. His family, too. Thanks for the help.”

“No need to thank me. You know I live for this stuff,” Ben said.

“Can’t relate.”

Though the two men were twins, Ben was pretty much Asher’s opposite. Where Asher liked to get into the thick of things and investigate on the ground, Ben usually preferred to hole up in his office, running software and searching databases. His skills served Forge Brothers Security well.

“So,” Asher continued, “how’s the wedding chaos going?”

“I’m trying to stay away from it as much as possible,” Ben said gruffly. “Though I was forced to learn, against my will, that Bristol got her way and they’re doing black bridesmaid’s dresses.”

“How does Grace feel about it all?”

Ben paused, letting out a long sigh before answering. “She’s driving me bonkers. She’s trying to act like she’s totally not hinting about me proposing, but as you know, she has about as much tact as, well, you.”

“You’re right, I don’t have any tact,” Asher agreed. “So, I’ll just say it. Ask that girl to marry you already and stop being a wimp.”

Ben groaned. “Even Dolly wants me to hurry up and marry her.”