David Silva - The Disappeared

D.C. wasn’t the kind of man who would tell him that, of course. He wasn’t the kind of man who would even hint at it. But the writing on the wall was an easy read. Too many things were beginning to go wrong. It was easier—and probably smarter in the long run—to shut things down before they got too far out of hand.

Childs positioned the specimen, and turned his attention to the control panel. It was frightening how quickly everything had seemed to spin out of control. A lifetime of work was on the line and they were ready to scrap it. Just like that. No second thoughts. No regrets.

What an ungodly waste , he thought.

They had made their way around the perimeter of the Institute property, staying close to the fence where the shadows were darkest. There was a sliver of moon out tonight, just enough to cast a grayish tint over the landscape. It was that grayish tint that served as their eyes.

At the back of the building, they kept low and moved along the line of shrubbery until the last twenty or thirty feet, where they were forced to scamper across an opening. Walt held Teri’s hand all the way. They reached the emergency exit door, Teri breathing hard on one side, Walt scanning their surroundings on the other.

“So far so good,” she said.

“That was the easy part.” He grinned at her, thoroughly enjoying himself.

“Great. Now you tell me.”

It was a matter of picking the lock next, and it took him less than thirty seconds to do it. She watched him, amazed at how simple he made it look. The lock popped. He turned the knob slowly, then opened the door a crack and waited.

“What—”

“Shhh.” He waited for another five count, then motioned her on through, and entered right behind her. Inside, a short hallway faced them. At the far end, the darkness was spotted by a couple of overnight lights in the receptionist’s area. Off to the right, just as the blueprints had shown, was the stairway that was supposed to take them down to the basement. What the blueprints hadn’t shown was the locked door that blocked access to the stairway.

“Christ!” Walt ran the palm of his hand over the surface and Teri could see that the door was made of metal. It was painted an ugly navy gray that contrasted sharply with the large black lettering. The lettering said, simply enough: STAIRWAY.

“Can’t you pick it?”

“Yeah, but it’s a mortise lock. It’ll take a little longer to play around with the cylinder.”

“I’ll cancel our dinner reservations.”

“You do that.”

It didn’t take as long as Walt had led her to believe. Maybe a minute-and-a-half. Two minutes at the most. He worked with it intensely, then suddenly whispered, “Got it!” and fought a moment longer before Teri heard the dead bolt slide back from the strike plate. The door swung out.

“I’ll see if I can get our reservations back.”

Walt pulled the flashlight out of his backpack, and they started down the stairway.

“That guy really is an asshole,” Mitch said.

“I know. Even worse, he’s a skittish asshole.” D.C. swirled the ice around the bottom of his cup of Diet Coke, then finished the drink. The cubicle where they were talking sat in the middle of a maze of cubicles on the third floor. The only light on in the room was the Luxo fluorescent lamp above the desk. “He’s going to panic and do something stupid one of these days.”

“How’d you ever hook up with him anyway?”

“It was a long time ago. I like to think I’ve grown a little wiser since then.”

Mitch let out a huff. He stood at the corner of the cubicle, leaning against a divider, his arms crossed, all business. You never had to guess with Mitch, and you rarely had to keep an eye on him, the way you had to watch Childs all the time. Some men you could trust, some you couldn’t.

“Things are getting tight,” he said, just before biting down on an ice cube.

“I know.”

“We’re going to have to do something about this mess before it gets so far out of hand we can’t bring it back under control.”

“You have something in mind?”

“I don’t know. I guess if I thought I could get away with it, I’d be tempted to try taking our asshole doctor out of the picture entirely and see what we’re left with.”

“Scrap the project?”

“The project’s already dead. The guy’s been working on this thing for twenty years and he still doesn’t have a fucking clue about what’s going on.” D.C., who had finished the last of the ice, tossed the cup aside and sat up. He felt tired, a little from stress and a little from the fact that he still hadn’t had dinner. “And with this Knight woman and her friend poking around—Christ, this thing’s a bomb waiting to go off. And we’re sitting right on top of the damn thing.”

“So?” Mitch prompted.

“So, I wish I knew what the hell to do about it.”

“I’ll take him for a ride, if you’d like.”

“Thanks, but we’d still have a room full of sleepers to worry about.” He paused, anticipating that Mitch might make an offer to take care of the kids as well. That would be the kind of tell that would worry him, D.C. thought. Because it was one thing to be all business, and quite another thing to be a fucking loon. If Mitch had mumbled a single syllable about handling the kids, he might very well have stood up and shot him right on the spot. Bang, you’re dead. One less psycho in the world to worry about.

The man, however, made no such offer.

“Are your hands dirty?” Mitch asked.

“No, of course not.”

“And the agency?”

“Everything’s clean. Why?”

“I don’t know; it just seems like maybe the easiest thing to do would be to get up and walk away. Leave the whole thing sitting in the doc’s lap.”

“He’d squeal.”

“Anything to back him up?”

“No. I’m not aware of anything.”

“Well, then.” Mitch shrugged, enjoying the scenario. “Mrs. Knight stumbles onto the scene, she finds the doc here with her kid and a whole room of other kids just like him, and who’s she gonna point her finger at? Hell, the only way they found this place is by tailing Childs.”

“And everything’s in the name of the Institute. He’s registered as the President of the Board of Directors on all the paperwork. It just might work.” D.C. rocked back in the chair, running it through his mind in case there was something he might be missing. You had to be careful with something like this. Overlook one small detail and you could find the whole thing blowing up in your face. “It does have a sweet sense of irony about it, doesn’t it?”

The room was completely dark except for the gray cast of the four video monitors mounted across the back of the console. Just at the periphery of the man’s vision, the nearest monitor reflected the slow, sweeping movement of the camera over the receptionist’s area on the main floor. The screen flickered and the picture changed. This camera was mounted near the ceiling above the basement landing, just outside the elevator. It did a slow, deliberate sweep across the open space.

Jake, who was working alone tonight, briefly glanced up from his checkbook then returned to the task of trying to find the one-hundred and forty-seven dollars and thirty-six cents that was missing from his account according to his current bank statement. He’d had this problem with the bank before, though it had always been a couple of dollars here, a couple of dollars there. That kind of difference wasn’t worth the time or effort to track down. But a hundred-and-something dollars, that was real money. You could make a down payment on a fine stereo system with that kind of money. He wasn’t going to let it slide. The bank had some explaining to do.