Page 113 of The Presidents Shadow
MADDY PSYCHICALLY COMMANDS the hungry rat to stop torturing McCarthy. But the rat doesn’t go far. It simply leaps to McCarthy’s shoulder and rests there, awaiting further instructions.
“Get him off of me,” McCarthy says.
Maddy quietly answers. “Yeah, eventually. But for now—tell us everything you know about what’s been going on. Tell us about Chloe. Tell us about Travis.”
“You know a lot of this shit already,” McCarthy says, cautiously eyeing the rat.
“Just make believe that we don’t know anything,” Maddy says. “You seem pretty convinced that we’re stupid, so why don’t you start at the beginning. But I wouldn’t go slow—brother rat will get hungry again.”
“Okay,” says McCarthy. “Okay. This might not come as a big surprise, but Carla Spector has a list of clients that have very specific tastes. They want a certain kind of drug, and they want a certain type of young girl—or boy—to bring it to them.”
“I see,” says Maddy, though she wishes she didn’t.
“Wait a minute,” says Belinda. “Do you mean like what happened to Joanna?”
“What?” Maddy asks, almost losing her control of the rat. “What happened to Joanna?”
“She’s fine,” Belinda says quickly. “But one time she said that instead of doing a drop, her driver took her straight to Carla. There was some big-deal guy on the other end of a video call. Joanna and a bunch of other girls had to walk in front of the camera, and he, uh… he picked one.”
“Picked one?” Maddy asks, her gaze going to McCarthy, who shrugs.
“Yeah,” Belinda goes on. “She said she was real bummed, because Carla said whoever the guy picked was going to have it made. Money. Travel. Clothes. Whatever they wanted.”
“Sure,” Maddy says skeptically, still looking at McCarthy. “I’m sure that’s exactly how that played out.”
“Yeah, sure,” says McCarthy meekly. “I’m sure they’re all together on a beach somewhere sipping daiquiris, or some stupid girl drink with a toy in it.”
“What does that sound like to you?” Maddy asks Belinda.
“Bullshit,” Belinda says.
Maddy closes her eyes and clasps her hands together.
When she opens her eyes a few seconds later, three cockroaches are crawling up McCarthy’s arms. They make their way to his neck, then his jawline.
He squeezes his mouth shut, but the lead cockroach pries his lips open.
Its legs are just entering his mouth when McCarthy folds.
He starts talking. In fact, it seems that McCarthy won’t shut up.
It’s a bizarre, astonishing, repulsive tale that he tells.
The chosen kids—about thirty of them over the past two years—are provided to special clients with special tastes. This means wealthy, important types. The lowest of scum sitting in the highest of income brackets.
“Chloe?” Maddy asks. “Travis?”
McCarthy nods but doesn’t add anything.
“What happened to my friends?” Belinda yells.
The cockroaches spring back to life. One of them is halfway up McCarthy’s nostril before he relents.
“They can’t exactly go back home,” McCarthy says. “Not after the things they’ve seen. When the people who hired them are finished, they’re sent to a confidential research lab outside of Sacramento.”
He begins to explain. He tells Maddy and Belinda that there is a medical research lab in a town named Rancho Cordova.
There the abducted victims are injected with a very specific dose of Newbola.
Then they are reassigned to foreign dignitaries and global celebrities—from CEOs in Japan to university professors in South America, sheiks in the Mideast and presidents in Africa—so they can spread the horrendous disease around the known world.
“Do you know the specific locations?” asks Maddy.
“I heard that some were sent to Japan, some to Denmark. And, like you already know, we were working to get some girls to Dubai.”
“That’s what you injected us with, isn’t it?” Maddy asks, horrified.
“Yes,” McCarthy admits. “But don’t get all freaked out about it. The strain that the abductees are injected with is a special, dormant kind. The carriers can’t drop dead; they wouldn’t be very useful, then, would they?”
Maddy and Belinda are, of course, horrified by the revelation. Maddy wonders if the injection of Newbola affected her differently than Belinda because of her innate powers.
“These places you mention were struck by Terrageddon,” says Maddy. “That means there’s a connection between the kidnapped kids, the spread of Newbola, and the natural disasters that are destroying the world.”
Belinda nods in agreement.
They both look at McCarthy. The sneer on his face has disappeared. His shoulders have slumped forward. His eyed are partially closed.
“Is that what’s going on, McCarthy? Is Glenn Ambrose working with Carla Spector to disperse Newbola far and wide?”
“Wait. I think he passed out,” says Belinda.
“As soon as he comes to I have a lot more questions that need answering,” says Maddy. “If the Newbola strain that the carriers are injected with isn’t meant to kill them, it’s possible we could still find kids like Chloe and Travis alive.”
The only problem is that Detective McCarthy can’t answer their questions.
He’s dead.