Jeff Abbott - Fear

‘What agency?’

‘Dodd’s group is code-named Shaman. But you won’t see them listed on a congressional budget. They operate out of back rooms, with money cleaned through legit projects. He’s in charge of clandestine scientific research for the Defense Department.’

It clicked. Frost would be an immediate benefit to soldiers mentally devastated by the horrors of war. ‘So she was supposed to steal it for Dodd.’

‘Returning his stolen property.’

‘Why didn’t she just send it to Dodd?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why did she send Frost to your server?’

‘I don’t know. I’d had no contact with her since she went to Santa Fe. Dodd forbade it.’ Wallace closed his eyes. ‘The – the people on Dodd’s team three years ago, we developed the initial version of Frost. I’m a neurobiologist – I worked on the beta blockers to prevent traumatic memories from consolidating. Allison was one of the psychiatrists. But our prototype drug didn’t work unless administered within two hours immediately following the trauma. One soldier in the test group, he went psychotic. When his long-term trauma didn’t go away… he killed the other patients in the testing. All of them.’ Wallace’s voice broke. ‘We brought those people there to help them, to cure them, and they all were murdered, one by one, in their sleep. Dodd ended the project and killed the research. Renee blamed herself.’

‘She knew about Frost. She knew what it was, from the beginning,’ Miles said.

‘After Dodd shut down the project, his team drifted into other work. Renee and I moved up to Fresno to open a PTSD clinic while I taught college and continued research. We kept a low profile, and then Dodd showed up at our house a few months ago. Quantrill had got hold of the original research – another researcher stole the original work and sold it to him – and managed to take Frost to the next level. Dodd found out – probably from the researcher who sold the data to Quantrill. Dodd can be… convincing. As in his way or it’s your funeral. That researcher died in a car accident. I don’t believe much in coincidence.’

Miles remembered the news account. ‘You had a hiking accident a few weeks back.’

‘Dodd forced us to quit our jobs and we moved up here for a lower profile. Renee went to Santa Fe to do Dodd’s spying for him… She called me late one night on the phone from her office. She missed me. Dodd must have been monitoring her office line; he sent a message as to what happens when his rules are broken. He came, asked me to go on a hike with him so we could talk, gave me a shove off a ten-foot bluff. Just enough to hurt, to rough me up. A warning.’

‘Nice.’

Wallace said, ‘Renee blamed herself for the Frost patients’ dying before; she never got over it. Dodd covered up the deaths, made the families believe the patients had died in a fire in the ward at a medical hospital in San Diego where we did the work.’

‘So Dodd wanted a new and improved Frost back. He made Allison his spy.’ She’d been a spy of sorts – just like him. Miles’s chest tensed; he remembered her words the last morning he saw her: I think I understand you better than you know.

Wallace nodded. ‘Memory research… it’s a small world. Quantrill couldn’t know that she’d worked on the original team. She had to see if his version of Frost had promise, steal it if it did, and then she could be Renee again.’

‘Why didn’t Dodd just go to the authorities and let them handle it? Quantrill broke the law, buying government secrets…’

‘Dodd didn’t want the original project exposed; the Pentagon was doing secret drug testing on veterans. I don’t think Dodd has a shadow; the man doesn’t see the light of day often.’

‘Connect the other players for me. Sorenson. Who’s he?’

Wallace sat down in the chair, mopped sweat from his forehead. ‘He’s a mean bastard. He worked security on Dodd’s projects. He was supposed to go to Santa Fe and protect Renee, help her if she needed to bypass security systems to steal the Frost research.’

‘Sorenson killed her.’

‘What?’

‘He planted the bomb that killed her.’ He told Wallace about seeing Sorenson enter and leave Allison’s office without his case, return and speak on the phone about Dodd.

Wallace paled, covered his eyes with his hand.

‘Would Sorenson have access to explosives?’

‘He used to be in covert operations for the Pentagon. He’s Dodd’s security guy. Dodd called me early this morning, in a panic, because he knew she’d sent the files to the server. I don’t know how he knew

…’

‘Early this morning?’ Miles said. Oh, Jesus. His mouth went dry. Nathan, putting the pay-phone receiver down, a sheepish look on his face, a lie on his lips about a weekly duty to call his mother. A call he could not risk in the same room, even with Miles asleep. Dodd was connected to Allison; Allison tried to help Nathan escape. So maybe… ‘I think I know who called him. Dodd ever mention a guy named Nathan Ruiz?’

‘No.’

It didn’t mean Nathan didn’t know Dodd. ‘So Dodd wanted the files she sent.’

‘But they’re not there. I use the server to run a small Web hosting business, and to hold my research database, run power-hungry apps I use in my work – I never saw any files, never knew they were there. You have to believe me.’

‘Dodd doesn’t.’

‘I gave him the access codes, he checked it himself. Someone accessed the server this morning using the admin password Renee and I used and ran a wiping program to destroy all the data on the drive… everything’s gone, totally overwritten. Nothing’s recoverable, and I’ve already tried. The only other person with the administrative password who could have done that was Renee. Unless she gave the password to someone.’

Miles thought it through. ‘Sorenson. Allison wasn’t hiding the files from him – she was stashing them to deliver to Dodd. So the files would still be available to him or Sorenson if Quantrill’s people caught or killed her. But she must have told Sorenson the code, or he found the password – people are always writing that stuff down – and he took the Frost research off the server, then wiped the server to destroy the files once he’d retrieved them.’

‘Dodd doesn’t believe me, he thinks I have Frost. He’s coming. That’s why I need to hide.’ A tremble colored Wallace’s voice.

The picture wasn’t fully clear and Miles shook his head. ‘Go back to Sorenson. Where’s he?’

‘Dodd said Sorenson went missing two days ago; Dodd thinks another man, a guy named Dennis Groote who works for Quantrill, caught up with him. Probably killed him.’

Probably after our escape from the hospital, Miles thought. ‘This Nathan Ruiz I mentioned. He was a patient of Allison’s. Sorenson went to a lot of trouble to try and kill him at Sangre de Cristo, but I don’t know why.’

‘I never heard of him.’

‘But you’ve heard of me. She asked me to help her before she died. If Sorenson was supposed to protect her, she sure didn’t need me. So… she must have suspected he was betraying her. He took Frost.’ But then why give him the key to the hidey-hole for the files? It made no sense, unless she’d given the password before she suspected him.

‘This is all Dodd’s fault,’ Wallace said. ‘If he’d left well enough alone…’

‘One more question. WITSEC vetted Allison, it did a background check on her.’

‘So?’

‘So Allison Vance isn’t a real person; she couldn’t have passed the check under false name.’

‘Well, clearly, she did. Dodd would have handled ensuring her background was impeccable.’

Still, it bothered Miles. ‘Why risk it, though? If she was there as a spy, why take on a client who might expose her?’